Resurrection
by SerenityJane
Summary: A fic based during End of Days, from Ianto's POV. How did everyone react to Jack's death? And who was really responsible for bringing him back? Want a hint? it's not Gwen! Please R and R! Warning for spoilers all TWs1
1. Chapter 1

**RESURRECTION**

**Chapter One**

He stood in the doorway, tea-tray held out before him, his eyes fixed on the still, silent form standing beside the wall of stainless steel drawers, filled with the corpses of former comrades, friends and foes, human and otherwise. The forlorn figure was staring down at an opened drawer, containing a body so pale as to be nearly indistinguishable from the pristine white sheet which covered it from the chest down. She had seemingly not moved since his last check, three hours ago. He carefully avoided looking at the body lying on the dull grey metal slab as he moved silently forward, pushing aside his reluctance to disturb her vigil. She didn't look up at his approach. He didn't even see her blink.

"Gwen?" he said softly.

Gwen turned to him slowly. Her eyes were puffy and red from lack of sleep and intermittent torrents of tears, heavily underscored by smudged make-up and bagged from lack of sleep. Her clothes were wrinkled and stained, giving the impression that she had slept in them for several days. This impression was a false one, though – he knew that she had not slept for precisely one day, twelve hours and twenty-three … twenty-four minutes. 'Careworn' would be the most apt description, he thought to himself, suppressing the urge to flee to the nearest reflective surface to ensure that his own emotional state could not be as easily read from his own attire and features.

"I made you some coffee," he said, carefully not wincing as she turned her dark eyes towards him, and a nearly palpable wave of pain washed over him, trying to drag him back into the depths of despair he had only recently retrieved himself from. He warded his mind as best he could from her, determined not to be pulled under again. Not yet. There was too much to be done.

She blinked, and he could almost hear the sound of her eyelids scratching over her dry, grit-filled eyes.

"Thank…" She cleared her throat, her voice husky from lack of use. "Thank you, Ianto." She reached out for the mug, and he watched the shadow of her hand drift over the blank face of the man lying before them. He felt himself start to slip, and quickly shifted his attention back to Gwen. She picked the mug up from his tray, and wrapped her small hands around it tightly. She smiled faintly as she ran her thin fingers over the design, a cartoonish picture of a small dog with the caption "Tell another shit joke about me, and I will sue!" A gift from Rhys, he imagined. He assumed the dog was of the shi-tzu breed. "I thought you threw this out," she said after a moment. "You thought it was tasteless."

"I don't recall mentioning that." Ianto Jones was never tactless.

"You didn't have to," she replied, her smile more genuine this time, though still sad. "I saw your expression when I first brought it into the kitchen. You looked like you had swallowed a live fish." Gwen sighed, gazing back down at the corpse. "Jack almost shit himself laughing, when Tosh showed him the security footage."

Ianto turned away, ostensively to place his empty tray on a nearby bench, though in reality he moved so that Gwen could not see the flash of pain that he knew would show in his eyes. God, that laugh. . . he doubted he had ever heard a sound more alive. It was all he could do, sometimes, not to grin and join in when the Hub echoed with Jack's mirthful cackling.

He hesitated for a moment, then moved back to her side, placing a hand on the woman's shoulder. She tilted her head, brushing her cheek against his fingers. They stood like that for awhile, Gwen's cheek warming his cold hand, her hair brushing like black silk over the sleeve of his jacket. Her pain was like the tide, lapping against the island of his calm, slowly eroding his restraint. 'I should go,' he told himself. 'Leave before I lose control. I don't have time to deal with Gwen's overwhelming need to fix everything and everyone.' He gave a silent sigh. He couldn't leave just yet.

"It's like he's sleeping," she said eventually, dreamily. She reached out brushed a hand against Jack's hair, messing it slightly. Ianto firmly suppressed the irrational compulsion to pull out his comb and put the hair back into order. "And I'm sure that if I stay here long enough, he'll wake up. He'll open his pretty blue eyes and see me staring down at him." She pulled away from him slightly, and rubbed the back of her hand across her eyes. He allowed his arm to fall back to his side. "Then he'll grin up at me, and say something particularly inappropriate and Jack-like." Her lips quirked slightly. "Maybe, 'Hi there, Gwen. See something you like?' or 'Hey, Gwen, it's kind of cold in here. Would you like to climb aboard and warm me up?'" Ianto felt the slightest smile tug at the corner of his mouth. "Then he would laugh, and I would laugh, and you , Ianto, would stand there looking faintly disapproving, but I'd know that you'd be just as relieved as I was." She glanced up at the camera, whirring faintly from its position above the doorway. "And Tosh, knowing her, is likely sitting at her desk and watching us on the security footage; she would see that Jack was awake, then she'd smack Owen out of his alcoholic stupor and they'd both come belting in here, hell-for-leather. And everything would go back to normal." She sighed, closing her eyes.

'If this was a fairytale, that is exactly what would happen,' he thought to himself. She was always so certain that everything would turn out alright eventually, despite how often it all ends in tears. And then, when everything goes to shit, she'll howl to the heavens at the unfairness of it all, as if there's anyone there to care. She made him feel so old, sometimes.

"But that's just wishful thinking, isn't it, Ianto?" Gwen continued, as if she could hear his thoughts. He was surprised at the bitterness in her voice. "Even if he does 'wake up', he's more likely to say, 'Get the fuck away from me, you traitorous bitch!" The self-loathing and disgust etched on her tired face and through her strained voice, permeating the air around her, an echo of his own suppressed emotions. "We betrayed him, Ianto." She began to walk back and forth, back and forth, along the metal slab, as if she wanted to flee the object of her guilt, but couldn't bring herself to leave him. "He's lying there, cold and still and _dead_, because of us. I mean," she continued, the fingers of her free hand absently scratching across the arm holding her imperilled coffee aloft as she paced, "How could we have been so stupid! How could we have fallen for that? After all that we have seen, everything we have done, the ghosts of our dearly departed suddenly start appearing out of the blue and telling us to open the rift, and we actually _do it_!" She came to a sudden halt, spilling coffee onto the tiled floor, her bout of furious energy apparently exhausted. "And he pays the price," she finished, nearly whispering.

'At least you had some excuse,' he thought bitterly, but said nothing. Gwen had only just lost Rhys, when Bilis moved into the final act of his epic production; the pain had been fresh and spilling from her mind to soak the atmosphere around her like blood pouring from an open wound. Rhys' death had been too recent, unreal, unacceptable.

Ianto's eyes were drawn involuntarily to Drawers 11 and 12, on the right hand corner of the top row. They were like old friends, those drawers – so familiar, every scratch and stain on them etched into his memories. Where the bodies of two young women rested, one entombed in a casket of wires and metal, stab-wounds all over her body; the other, wearing a red-stained Jubilee Pizza uniform, with her skull split in half and crudely stitched back together, gunshot wounds perforating her stomach and chest.

He looked down at the corpse … 'No, not a corpse, it's _Jack_, God damn it,' he snarled to himself. He made himself look away - Ianto knew he wouldn't be able to keep his distance if he stared for too much longer. Jack had more life to him than anyone he'd ever met before. He was never still, and to see him so white and cold and _still_ was more than he could take.

'So the tally is now at three.' he thought to himself bleakly. 'The three victims of Ianto Jones, all stored away in a hermatically-sealed metal filing cabinet.'

Lisa. Annie. Jack. The names echoed through the hollowness that had displaced his soul.

'The first brought down by my lack of punctuality, the second by my selfishness and the third by my stupidity.'

"Your coffee is getting cold," he said to Gwen, his voice flat and cold from the effort it took to keep his emotions suppressed, to keep from cracking and breaking apart like ice in thaw.

He walked out of the room and stood still, out of sight in the hallway. He looked up at the blank white ceiling above him and concentrated, breathing slowly and deeply, carefully pushing his emotions down into the deeper, darker corners of his mind. He carefully filed them away, locking them up to be dealt with later on. He stood there until he was cold, his surface thoughts clear and untainted.

When he was calm again, he walked into Owen's laboratory and retrieved his office chair.

He re-entered the mortuary, pushing the chair before him as he walked, its wheels clicking irritatingly across the white tiled floor. He nodded with satisfaction when he saw that the mug had been emptied and placed back on the tea-tray. He positioned the chair beside Gwen, so that it would interfere with any further mindless pacing. She ignored the chair, not taking hear eyes from Jack's face.

"He'll wake up, Ianto," she said with conviction. She had faith. The kind of blind, rock-bottom faith that says 'I've done everything I can, and this has to work because if it doesn't there's nothing left.'

"I'm sure he will." he replied, voice carefully even. 'Though he may need some assistance,' he added silently. Because this wasn't _it. _Because he hadn't done everything, hadn't tried everything. Not yet.

He'd felt that kind of faith before, and had no intention of ever doing so again.

She nodded, satisfied, or if not satisfied then too fearful to challenge him, fearful of losing her tenuous certainty.

'The scene is set.' Ianto thought to himself. Now, he could leave.

Without another word, he turned and collected his tea-tray, then walked out of the morgue, leaving her to her vigil.


	2. Chapter 2

**RESURRECTION**

**Chapter Two**

As Ianto strode across the Central Hub, he found himself oddly unsettled by the stillness, the near silence of the place. The only noises he could hear were the sigh of water slipping down the spire, the slight rustle of his own clothing as he walked. He usually found the silence peaceful - this was how it was when he was here alone, the others out chasing down weevils or investigating odd reports, and generally making rather large messes for him to clean up, literally and figuratively (he had used 2.35 kilograms of ret-con on inadvertent witnesses this year alone, not a large amount until you consider that each pill weighs an average of 2 grams).

When he had still had Lisa, the sudden silence as the others ran out the door would mean a chance to be with her. After he had killed her, being alone in the hub had meant that he could loosen his control over his emotions, as he couldn't at home, in his apartment with only thin plaster walls as a shield from his neighbours and their children.

At the hub, there was at least five metres of concrete and dirt separating him from the outside world and the civilians in it, separating him from their confused mess of despair, rage, annoyance, frustration. Here, as long as he was alone, he could let go without fear that he would be inundated and lost beneath the flood of someone else's pain, or that he would accidentally project his emotions onto others and send them either homicidal with rage or suicidal with despair.

His Lisa had been mourned in fits and spurts, in stolen time.

When it all became too much, inward pressures building so high that he feared he would lose control and have a complete breakdown, or just go completely mad, a likely possibility considering his family history, he would take a the weekend off from work and drive up to the deserted cliffs standing sentinel against the sea south of Cardiff.

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He had gone up there once, not long after being nearly eaten by the villagers. Jack was at the hub, as he usually was, and Ianto had wanted to be alone, needed to be alone. Alone, so he could let go, lose control. So he could curse and kick and scream if he had to, lash out without fear that he would project it all onto someone else.

He had ended up sitting on the rocky ground at the height of the bluffs, shields completely down, back braced against the side of his car, intentionally hidden from sight of the road. People did come up here on occasion, despite the barren landscape, which provided no cover from the glaring sun, the heat magnified by the rocky surroundings.

Even knowing that people came up there on occasion, he had been completely surprised by the sudden screeching of tyres. He had peered around the side of the car, cautiously, as he had not felt anyone approaching, which was odd as he had been at that moment completely unshielded. Between the specks of drifting dust kicked up by the car's abrupt halt, he was surprised to see the SUV. The floating dust was sent into a whirl as the driver's side door was thrown open and Jack jumped out.

He had learned later that, when he had not come into work that weekend, Jack had become concerned enough to use the satellite to track the position of his mobile phone.

Ianto observed silently as Jack stepped away from the vehicle, then turned in a full circle, scanning the surrounding area, before walking rapidly, almost running, towards the flimsy fence cordoning off the cliff's edge. He had stepped over the barricade, standing perilously close to the edge as he looked down. Ianto had stood up then, watching him without making a sound, hesitant to speak in fear of surprising him and causing him to fall. He knew that Jack was near-immortal and though the fall wouldn't kill him, Ianto suspected that hitting the jagged rocks and cement-hard water from that height would be rather painful.

Ianto had known Jack's secret for some time. He had been watching him closely, after Lisa. Since he had awoken from what he had thought, had hoped, was death, to feel a tingling sensation on his lips, to see Jack's eyes staring intently into his from only centimetres away. Since then, he had seen Jack survive certain death three times, and had removed all evidence of it from the records without a word of it to the Captain.

So he was not too concerned for Jack's safety as he peered down the fifty-foot cliff face. Ianto stood by the car, waiting for Jack to turn, and began to feel slightly impatient as the minutes ticked by. The view was spectacular, he knew, but Jack wasn't even looking up, was just staring fixedly at the swirling waters at the cliff's base. It was a gorgeous sight, really. Jack's dark coat being snapped about him by the wind, his black hair messy and wild from the gusty blows, a brooding figure starkly outlined against the pure azure sky. He was surprised to hear Jack give a shuddering sigh, loud enough to be heard clearly from where he was standing.

He watched as Jack slowly, almost reluctantly, reached a hand into his coat pocket and withdrew his phone. "Please." Jack whispered, the heavy winds carrying the word to Ianto's ears. He dialed a number, and Ianto was surprised to feel his own phone vibrating in his jeans pocket. It was on silent mode, however the rattling of his keys against the phone gave him away as Jack whirled around, coat flaring wide.

"Sir?" He had asked. His voice was raspier than usual, a result of being nearly strangled by the drawstrings on the hessian-bag hood. God, the smell of that thing . . . a sick mixture of blood and laundry powder, as if the wife had just thrown it in the wash after using it on their last victim.

Jack began to walk towards him, without a word.

"Jack?" He asked again. Jack did not reply, only moved faster, and Ianto drew his hands up in involuntary warding. When Jack reached him, the impact was hard enough to force most of his breath from his lungs. His remaining air was lost in an involuntary grunt of pain as Jack threw his arms around his injured ribs, holding him tight against his chest, Ianto's hands trapped between them.

"What's wrong?" he asked, the words muffled against Jack's shirt. He didn't reply. After a moment Ianto pushed at his chest lightly, and Jack loosened his grip, allowing him to move back, though he kept hold of Ianto's shoulders. "What's wrong, Captain?" he asked again, worried now.

Jack's eyes were sharp on his face, probing, looking for Ianto did not know what. "I thought you'd gone over," he replied. "You weren't answering your phone and when I looked at the tracking system it said you were up here. . ."

'What is he was doing, checking up on me?' he asked himself, frowning at Jack. Jack had scowled at him in reply, though Ianto could it wasn't genuine. There was nothing but relief in his eyes.

"What are you doing up here, Ianto?" from the look on his face, he could tell what Jack thought he had been planning. He almost felt insulted, that Jack would even consider it. As if he would just leap off the cliff, leaving his body to wash up on some random piece of coastline, possibly to be found by some unsuspecting runner or a group of children playing. No, if he had really wanted to die, Jack would never have found him in time. Ianto would have made it look like a natural death, possibly placing a call to Emergency Services beforehand so that his body would be found by someone used to dealing with such things. Just jumping off a cliff. . . far too messy, far too many variables, too much that could go wrong.

"I come up here to think," he had replied, deciding it was best to be honest, or at least partially honest. Otherwise, he would likely end up chained in one of the cells, to stop him from hurting himself.

Jack remained there, staring into his eyes. Ianto met his gaze steadily. After a moment, Jack nodded slightly, hopefully satisfied.

Releasing his shoulders, Jack gave him another hug, much more gently this time, then walked back towards the cliff, bending down to scoop up the phone he had dropped there before.

He scowled at Ianto as he came back, his irritation genuine this time. "What the hell did you think you were doing, driving with a concussion?"

It was on the drive home, sitting beside Jack in the passenger seat of the SUV, that he realised that as upset and concerned as Jack had been, he had felt nothing from him. No fear, no anger, no despair. It was true that he had never sensed anything from Jack before, but that was not unusual. He had always had his shields up before. But he had been up here to relax, to escape. He had left his defences down, his mind wide open. He should have been reeling under the onslaught of another's emotion, but there was nothing. It was a strange feeling, to be with someone without that invisible wall between them, yet still be completely alone in his mind. It was peaceful. An odd word to associate with Jack, but there it was.

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Shaking his head in an attempt to banish the memories, he continued his climb up the stairs to Tosh's workstation.

Gwen had been correct about Tosh watching the security footage from her desk. The camera feed was in a small window in the top left hand corner of her computer screen. Or, more accurately, Gwen would have been correct, except that Tosh was now unconscious, slumped forward over her uncharacteristically cluttered desk, her head cushioned on her keyboard, her computer bleeping in irritation at the resulting jibberish being typed across the screen.

Ianto gently lifted her head, and wheeled her and her chair over to the far corner of the desk. She did not stir. He smiled slightly to himself, then removed her coffee mug from the desk and placed it on his tray alongside Gwen's.

With Tosh in the only available chair, he kneeled on the floor behind her desk and began to type, for once thankful for his abnormal height. He opened a new window and examined the camera feed from the security camera covering Tosh's workstation. The camera recorded what was going on in the general area, but the angle was such that no recordings had been made of what Tosh had been typing into the keyboard or any of the work on her screen. He nodded in satisfaction. In case someone happened to look over the footage later on, he did not want the others to know just how good he was at manipulating the security cameras. They would be able to see him typing, but not what he was working on.

He edited the program that caused the security cameras throughout the hub to sweep and change angle at random intervals, replacing the random schedule with a very carefully planned schedule of his own. The new schedule seemed to be random, however it was very carefully timed, so that every 15 minutes and 32 seconds the cameras were in such a position that a slight pathway of unmonitored area ran from the Archives, through the central hub and to the mortuary, lasting one minute and 42 seconds.

Glancing at Gwen in the security feed, Ianto could see that Gwen was losing the battle with sleep. She was weaving gently from side to side, and he hoped that she had the sense to sit down before the sedative in her coffee dropped her on her arse.

Standing, he wiped the dust from his knees, then moved to stand behind Tosh, gently pushing her chair back into position in front of her desk. He pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and gently wiped a line of drool from the corner of her mouth. As she began to fall forward, Ianto caught her, then replaced her head on the desk, pushing the keyboard back out of the way. Finally he adjusted her hair, so it was falling over her face, obscuring her features. He picked up the tea tray, then headed off in search of Owen.


	3. Chapter 3

**RESURRECTION**

**Chapter Three**

Following the snores now echoing throughout the hub, Ianto found Owen leaning against the wall, jean-clad legs curled up against his chest, one arm wrapped about his knees and the other arm outstretched, hand loosely holding a bottle of alcohol, the fluorescent lighting glinting off a small puddle beneath the bottle's mouth. The air was thick with the scent of it, and the smell of unwashed man.

Ianto recognized the bottle as one of Jack's private stash. He had found Owen in Jack's office earlier, raiding the liquor cabinet.

Ianto was not even sure why Jack had a liquor cabinet, as he had never seen Jack drink. Often, when they were in Jack's office, talking after work, he would serve himself a drink and politely offer to draw one for the captain. He would offer, every time, because it was polite, and Jack would smile and refuse, every time, and say he needed to keep hydrated.

He had walked into Jack's office earlier to retrieve something from the safe, and had found Owen in there, unlocking the cabinet with the 'any-key' that had mysteriously gone missing from the Archives a few weeks ago. When he had relocked the cabinet and turned to leave with his prize, he had started at seeing Ianto standing in the doorway.

"Well, it's not like he'll be needing it anymore, will he?" Owen had snarled, his feet firmly planted, jaw thrust out, a weevil challenge stare furrowing his brows.

Ianto had ignored him, not meeting the challenge. He walked into the room, unblocking the doorway, and deliberately turned his back on Owen to begin to re-tidy Jack's desk, wordlessly telling Owen that he did not consider the man to be a threat. Though in reality, he was watching Owen's reflection closely in the mirror hanging on the wall. Owen had stared at his back for a few minutes then growled to himself and stalked out of the room.

'He's like an injured animal,' Ianto had thought to himself, while he unlocked Jack's safe and retrieved the knife, concealing it under his jacket. When Owen was hurt, he could see nothing past the pain, snapping at anyone who came within range, regardless of whether they were the cause of the pain or not. He had always been like that, but things had been much worse since Dianne.

Dianne had managed to breach Owen's hard, spiky and irritable defensive shell in a matter of days, finding her way into the surprisingly soft heart he had been protecting; well, a surprise to anyone who hadn't seen what Owen had been like after witnessing the rape and murder of Lizzie Lewis.

Owen had fallen for Dianne, hopelessly and completely. Then Dianne had just fucked off and left him for no good reason, leaving him even more damaged than before, and so anguished and despairing that Ianto found him even more unbearable company than usual.

He had been so angry with Owen for opening the rift, for risking so much on the vague chance that it would bring her back. He could understand why he had done it, though. He had done something similar for Lisa, after all.

Despite seeing for himself what the cybermen could do, after feeling his co-workers and friends, people he had seen nearly every day since he was recruited to Torchwood at seventeen years old, screaming and keening in agony as their humanity, their emotions, everything that made them who they were was melted from them like burning flesh from bone, leaving nothing behind but a metallic shell. He had risked that fate for the entire world, on the slim possibility that he could save one woman. How could he judge Owen for what he had done?

He was more angry with himself than with Owen, now. Before, when he had been a part of Torchwood One, he would not have hesitated to kill Owen where he stood. Then all of this would have been prevented, Jack would still be alive, as well as the thirty people who had been slaughtered by Abbadon. If it hadn't been for Jack, that monster would have destroyed the world, and only the Gods know how many more worlds would have followed. Ianto sighed to himself. These people were getting to close to him. It was affecting his judgment, his control. It was Lisa's fault, really. A wall breached once is always much easier to breach a second time.

Looking down at Owen, curled protectively around his stomach, back braced against the wall, his face so pale and haggard, he reflected coldly on what he was going to do to Dianne if he ever saw her again.

He placed his tea tray down on a nearby desk, then picked up the doctors' half-empty bottle and added it to the trays' contents.

"That position can't be good for your shoulder," he said to Owen. He leaned down and gently pulled him away from the wall, then pushed him into a sitting position. He then squatted beside him, slipping his right arm under his knees and bracing Owen's back against his left arm. He grunted slightly as he heaved himself upright, Owen cradled in his arms. Owen's head listed to the side and his stubbled cheek rasped audibly against the shoulder of Ianto's jacket, but he did not wake.

"It's a good thing you're so scrawny, Harper," he said conversationally. "if you were any heavier your stomach would be getting better acquainted with my shoulder, and you'd probably be having a much closer look at my arse than I assume you'd like." No response. 'He must be unconscious. I don't think Owen would have let that remark pass if he had been in any condition to respond.'

He turned side-on to take them through the doorway, then carefully descended the staircase to Owen's dark operating theatre-slash-autopsy room (a dual function Ianto tried not to think about too often). He walked over to the wall and flicked the light switches with the end of his finger. He turned, and sighed at the chaos revealed in the harsh light. It seemed as though Owen had had one of his 'fits of rage' down here earlier, resulting in a mess of scalpels, bandages, towels, scrubs, masks, pills and other paraphernalia scattered over the floor. He cleared a path through the mess using his feet, carefully avoiding the syringes, which were _probably_ empty.

Ianto placed Owen carefully down on the operating table, which seemed to be the only clear horizontal surface remaining. He swept the debris surrounding the table further back, creating a small uneven wall surrounding the bed.

Looking at the shirt, he considered just cutting the thing off. 'This does seem to be a favourite of his, though,' he thought, so he removed it carefully, disturbing his shoulder as little as possible. Eyeing the sour-smelling shirt with distaste, he threw it aside, for once unconcerned with the mess, and frowned disapprovingly at the dirty bandage wrapped around his shoulder. Owen's breathing changed slightly as he began to unravel it, indicating that he was now awake.

"Despite what you may think, Owen, I did not intend to kill you when I shot you." He stopped unraveling when he reached the layers of the dressing closest to the skin, which were brown with dried blood and stuck to the wound. He cleared another path through the debris and walked to the sink, picking up a bowl and a bottle of disinfectant along the way. While the bowl was filling, he searched the cupboards and retrieved some bandages still in their sterile packaging, and a cloth. Collecting the bowl from the sink he walked back to Owen, who still had not given any indication that he was awake.

He added the disinfectant to the bowl and wet the cloth, then applied it to the stuck bandages, hoping to soak them loose rather than rip them off and risk reopening the wound. 'It is going to be difficult to obtain his cooperation if he won't even acknowledge my existence,' he thought, so said something deliberately provoking. "In fact, I aimed at this exact spot, because I calculated that it would cause the maximum amount of pain for the smallest risk to your health."

He put the cloth aside and tested to see if the material would come unstuck. "It was a very good shot," he added. He carefully pulled the bandages away, the very last layer making a sickening sucking sound as it came loose. He threw the dirty linen into the waste bin kept at the side of the bed, then bent to examine the wound. He hissed slightly as the sight, the wound nearly black with encrusted blood. The bruising around the bullet wound was a nauseating mix of purple and deep green splotches. As he watched, fresh blood began to seep through the crust.

"This shoddy job you've done of looking after yourself shows no consideration at all for my efforts to leave you alive." His tone was sharp, letting some of his irritation show in an effort to prod Owen from his stony silence. "You should now, _doctor_, that dying by infection is typically very long and unpleasant." Owen remained still, silent, eyelids not even flickering. Ianto frowned. This was not like Owen at all. He hadn't even made a crack about nursing.

He walked back over to the sink and replaced the dirty water, and picked up a clean cloth, then returned to Owen's side. Owen did not even flinch at the feel of disinfectant on his raw flesh.

'I dislike doing this,' he thought, as he mentally prepared himself, gradually lessening the strength of his shields, making them slightly more opaque. 'It is the worst invasion of privacy.' For most people, this level of preparation would not be necessary. Ianto normally could not help but pick up strong emotions from people if he came too close to them.

This was one of the reasons he kept a careful leash on his emotions; it was sometimes very difficult to tell your emotions from those of the people around you. His uncle, Bwyn, was a telepath. He had to live in solitude, out in the countryside, because he could never tell his own thoughts from those of the people around him. Close proximity to ordinary people would drive him mad. Or madder, anyway.

The second reason Ianto tried to keep his emotions so tightly leashed was that he could project his own emotions onto others. It was impossible for him to tell how much his own emotions influenced those around him. As a result of this he had always been haunted by doubts that Lisa's feelings for him were not her own.

Since Gwen had joined them, he had to be even more careful about control. She was not Rift-born, not like he was – he had checked her family history when Jack first hired her, as he is required to do for all new additions to Torchwood Three. The records had shown that her mother's family had dwelt within Cardiff for four generations, whilst her father was born in London and only relocated to Cardiff in his early twenties. There had not been enough generations of her family born and living alongside the Rift for it to have affected her. She was not Rift-born, but she was the Community called a 'sensitive', a term used to describe more easily influenced and easier to read than an average person.

Owen, though … Owen was the exact opposite. He was difficult to read under the best of circumstances. Because of the strength of his natural shields, Ianto had always suspected him of having some latent psi ability, despite none of his family ever living in Cardiff. It's not like the Rift is the only source of psychics, after all. Well, Owen's shields were _usually_ strong. Since Dianne, however, he had been leaking emotions like a sieve. Until Gwen brought Jack's body back and he drank himself into a stupor. 'Another kind of shield,' Ianto thought to himself, 'the alcoholic haze.' One he had used himself, on occasion.

'A shield that is going to make this more difficult.' Ianto pushed his own emotions deep down and stored them in the dark, so that anything felt by Owen would be clearly distinguished. He placed one hand on Owen's upper arm, as if to hold him still while his other hand went to work cleaning the wound, though in reality it was to increase the connection.

He lowered the barrier just a bit more, then felt …. a cycle of muzzy, alcohol-confused, unfocused emotion. A violent anger, which built up to a towering rage. Without release, the rage slowly seeped away to leave a soul-deep weariness, which remained beneath the surface of the emerging feelings of guilt and self-disgust, feelings of worthlessness and loneliness, then the guilt increased until it became unbearable and he turned into anger at someone, something else. The anger built into a fiery rage which was unable to sustain itself, tapering off into weary guilt yet again.

He waited out another cycle to be certain, then withdrew, hastily rebuilding his walls.

He considered what he had learned. The emotions seemed to be following a pattern, so it seemed that Owen's thoughts were stuck in a loop. He sighed, wishing not for the first time that he had been 'gifted' with a more useful skill. Being able to read something as vague and changeable as emotion was often more hindrance than help.

'If Owen's to be of any use at all, I need to distract him long enough to break the cycle.' Ianto decided.

He was somewhat surprised that he had not picked up any of this before, particularly the rage, which was strong enough that he should have felt it despite the hazing effect of the whisky. 'He's possibly a latent telepath,' he considered. 'He is most likely unconsciously blocking the ability, which would explain why his shields are so thick and why he is so difficult to read.'

That would also explain why, when Owen's attention is focused solely on him (fortunately not a common occurrence), his attention pokes against Ianto's shields, like a boy jabbing a stick at a frog to see what would happen. Much like it is currently doing, in fact. He winced slightly at another sharp prod. Looking down at Owen's face, he could see that he still had not moved, still pretending to be asleep.

He continued his earlier one-sided conversation, watching for a reaction. "It is actually number 6 on my list." Nothing. He re-dampened the cloth and continued to clean.

"Number one would be slow dismemberment, centimeter by centimeter. This method of death had been coming in at number four, however the incident with the cannibals caused it to be moved to the top of the list." He rinsed the cloth, staining the water a deep brown.

"Number two," he said as he returned to the bed, "would have to be decompression. The face-plates on those space-suits that NASA uses look rather flimsy to me. If the plates actually broke, the change in pressure would likely cause your eyeballs to be sucked from their sockets. I imagine that wouldn't kill you, though. You would probably be in complete and utter agony for the three minutes it would take for you to die of oxygen deprivation." Finally satisfied that the wound was clean, he pulled a container of antiseptic cream from the rubbish wall, causing a partial collapse.

He thought he caught a slight flicker of movement when he glanced at Owen's face as he returned. "Lets see…. number three." He uncapped the cream and began to gently stroke it across the skin surrounding the wound. "I would say the third most unpleasant way to die would be being suspended over a vat of hydrochloric acid and gradually lowered in."

He thought he may have heard Owen sigh slightly. "I managed to spill some of that on my hand when I was doing an experiment in a chemistry class at high school. It was diluted acid, though. The bottle was labelled with a ratio of 1 to 200. Still, it was remarkably painful. You can still see the scar."

There was a snort of derision from under his hands. "Hydrochloric acid diluted to that ratio would barely even burn." Owen's bloodshot eyes were open, squinting up at him. Ianto smiled slightly, careful not to look too triumphant. Owen never could resist the opportunity to be a smart-arse.

"I know. The lab assistant who prepared the acid mixed up the labels. When they tested it later, they found it to be concentrated at a ratio of 1 to 20."

"Ah."

Having finished applying the cream, Ianto unraveled the fresh bandage slightly and taped the end to the upper part of his shoulder, roughly an inch above the injury. Owen sat up slightly, allowing him to wrap it properly.

"Number four would be death by radiation poisoning. For obvious reasons." He finished wrapping the bandage and taped the remaining end down on his back. He stepped back and nodded in satisfaction at the pristine white band now covering the wound, standing out in stark contrast to the greenish bruising on his skin.

"And number five would be death by rat poison. Not the stuff you can buy in shops now, mind. I'm talking about the poison they used in the sixties, containing large amounts of warfarin. What it would do was eat away at the rat's vital organs, so that they eventually bled to death whilst drowning in the blood filling their lungs. Depending on the amount you consumed, it could take a human a full half hour to die."

"You've put some thought into this, haven't you?" His voice was raspy, throat obviously dry. "You're fucking morbid, you are. Bet you were a Goth in school. Probably still got the eye-liner."

Ianto cleared another path through the rubbish, heading to the drawers where Owen kept a change of clothes. He pulled out a familiar black shirt and tossed it to him.

"I've got to do something to entertain myself while you lot are off chasing weevils."

Owen automatically lifted both arms and caught the shirt clumsily, then began swearing under his breath at the pain obviously flaring in his shoulder. Ianto ignored a slight stab of guilt. Very slight.

"How are the others?" Owen asked as he sat up slowly, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. He carefully pulled on his shirt, trying not to jar his arm or his head.

"There's been no change in Jack," he said, his voice flat. He walked back around the bed and stood facing Owen. "Gwen is still standing vigil over him, and I was just about to check on Tosh again."

He saw Owen about to speak, and interrupted. "I've been keeping an eye on the rift - it seems to be stable for the moment, however it is more active than usual. There have been some rather large energy fluctuations, which have caused trouble with television reception and mobile satellite services within the vicinity of Splott – those seem to be decreasing steadily, and should halt altogether by tomorrow night." Sage should be happy about that, Ianto thought to himself. The girl hated missing EastEnders.

"Time along Heol Y Castell is lagging slightly - about 26.3 seconds behind the rest of Cardiff. I think we may have something in Archives that can take care of that, but in the meantime people are just dismissing the lag as a result of particularly slow traffic." He cleared his throat, then continued.

"The radiation levels in Grangetown are a bit higher than I would like, though not high enough at the moment to be damaging to anyone's health. We can probably expect some unusual weather for a few days as well. Nothing that we can't handle, yet." He saw Owen's eyes glaze over under the onslaught of information, trying but failing to think beyond the hammering in his head.

He continued on, "Most of those who saw Abbadon and survived have already dismissed what they saw as a delusion. I have managed to ret-con the eighteen people who were convinced that what they saw was real, and they now have no memory of that day. I did have some difficulty obtaining all the CCTV footage from the rampaged area, though in the end I believe I managed to destroy it all. If I have missed anything and the footage shows up later on, it should be a fairly simple task to have it dismissed as a hoax. The deaths have been explained as being gang-related."

He paused for a moment, to allow Owen a chance to respond. He didn't take it. "Unusual, I know," Ianto continued, "but if we keep using the gas-leak explanation someone will eventually get suspicious. The bodies were shot up post-mortem, and various records were changed to show that most of the victims had connections to rival gangs. Those who couldn't believably be implicated in gang activity became innocent bystanders. The mortician was unable to find anything else wrong with any of the bodies apart from the bullet wounds, so that was his conclusion. The remark that he made about the wounds seemingly being made after death have been removed from all records of his report."

Owen blinked, then repeated, "shot up post-mortem? So you …."

"With several different weapons, which I then placed in the hands of the 'murderers'."

"Right," Owen replied, staring at him as if he had never seen him before. "Well, this have been a lovely chat and all, Ianto, but why are you telling me all this?"

"Because you are senior, if you recall." He managed to keep most of the relish from his tone. "You will be in charge of Torchwood Three until Torchwood One sends a replacement. And, given the current state of affairs at Torchwood One, it could be a long time before they send someone else down."

Ianto watched Owen's jaw drop open. "He's barely cold and you're already talking about replacing him?" he asked incredulously

"I'm being practical, Owen," he replied, and continued inwardly, 'And I'm attempting to distract you. Successfully, might I add.'

"You're a cold bastard, Ianto, you know that?" Owen stated, his voice caught between admiration and loathing. "You shot me with no hesitation, no expression on your face at all, nothing in your eyes, then you stand there and expect me to be grateful you didn't kill me. And now Jack's dead, and what are you doing? You're cleaning up the mess, like you always do, as if Jack being gone means nothing."

Ianto stood silent, letting the accusations wash over him. Can't hold a grudge at being misjudged when you've been hiding who you are, after all. Or what you are, for that matter. 'Besides,' Ianto silently acknowledged, 'there is _some_ truth to it.'

"Earlier, when we were trying to get Jack back from the past, you told me that he needs you. But I could have sworn what you meant was that you need _him._" There was a pause, and Ianto could almost see Owen's thoughts, twisting and flittering, trying to come to some sort of order.

"But now you're walking around, working, acting as if there's nothing wrong." Owen studied his blank face, his mind jabbing away at the shields. "With Lisa, you had her hidden here all that time, and we never had a hint from you that something was wrong. You held everything together until the end, when everything began to fall apart. Until there was no hope left. Then we killed her, and you completely lost it." Ianto watched the realization dawn in his eyes.

"Are you so sure, Ianto?" he asked, sitting forward. "How can you be so certain that Jack is going to wake up?" There was no longer accusation in his tone, only a plea for reassurance.

Ianto inwardly chided himself. Owen was a man who considered actions to be more telling than words, blank masks and silences. He'd have to, or he'd probably have killed himself years back as a public service. Owen wasn't the most … civil-tongued… person.

He should have taken this into consideration. Too late, now. Best he could do was not to give the doctor any more clues.

"I need you to keep an eye on things for awhile, Owen."

"You've got a plan, haven't you?"

"I haven't slept in two days."

"What can I do to help?"

You can keep out of the way. "You can watch the monitors."

"Screw the monitors! Who gives a fuck about the monitors?"

"So we're going to let everything go to hell, are we Owen?" Ianto asked, deliberately sharp and sarcastic. "Are we completely helpless without him here to hold our hands?"

Owen bristled at that, as Ianto knew he would. He had read his file, and he knew that he had issues with his father. For good reason, according to the reports. "The bastard is smug enough already, don't you think?" He asked, smiling slightly.

Owen didn't reply to this, but he reached out to take the controller Ianto held out to him. It was the one that Jack usually wore around his wrist, the one that Owen had removed himself earlier.

Ianto held onto it for a moment, not letting go until Owen looked up into his eyes. "I am certain, Owen."

He released the control into Owen's possession, then headed back to the central hub.


	4. Chapter 4

**RESURRECTION**

**Chapter Four**

Having dealt with Owen, Ianto moved onto his next task. He ascended the stairs to Tosh's work station one final time, looking at the security feed displayed on her computer screen. Gwen had finally succumbed to the sedative, it appeared. She was sprawled bonelessly in the chair he had brought in for her earlier, her hand resting on Jack's shoulder, head leaned back, mouth wide open in what he assumed was a continuous snore.

There appeared to be no change in Jack. Not that he had expected there to be, really, but it had been a faint hope in the back of his mind, a hope that he would come back by himself, that Ianto would not have to go and fetch him.

He scanned the latest footage from the mortuary, stopping when he reached the recording of Gwen falling bonelessly into the chair. The recording showed that she had stirred for a minute, then become completely still, apart from the rise and fall of her chest, the occasional twitch of a limb. This lasted for twelve minutes, until the current footage.

He nodded in satisfaction, his fingers dancing lightly across the keyboard as he replaced the live feed from the mortuary with those twelve minutes of footage, setting it to repeat. This would ensure that if Owen decided to check on the Captain, he would see nothing amiss.

Ianto knew Owen, far better than Owen knew him. The doctor would not check in person, he would keep his physical distance and instead check the cameras. He would see nothing amiss, apart from Jack's corpse. And, if anyone decided to review the archived footage later, all they would find was Gwen snoring away, Jack still dead.

He stood and watched the security display, ensuring that there were not obvious movements, the repetition of which would be noticed. As he reviewed the feed, he absently stroked a hand over Tosh's silky black hair, finger-combing it into order. She stirred slightly, muttering something in Japanese. He smiled, glancing down at her. His nihon-go was a bit rusty, but he thought she might have said "go away." He felt nothing from her but calm, and sleepy irritation. She had forgotten, for the moment.

He smoothed her hair one last time, then withdrew his hand.

Satisfied that the replacement was not obvious, he began to make his way down to Archives, forcing himself to walk sedately, despite the impatience he felt, the need to outrun the niggling thought that this would all be in vain, that the plan wouldn't work, that Jack would remain lying there forever, still and cold, never to move again.

More to distract himself than anything else, he made a call whilst he descended through the lower levels of the hub.

"Owen."

"What?" came the expectedly irritated reply.

"Just thought I'd let you know what's happening."

"Yeah, that would make a nice change."

"Tosh is still fast asleep at her desk. It doesn't look like she'll be awake anytime soon. Gwen is still in with Jack, though she seems to have fallen asleep as well. Snoring away at near ear-drum shattering levels, if the width her mouth is open to is any indication."

"Life is good for some."

Ianto ignored the jibe, knowing that, for Owen, snark was a reflex reaction – it was nothing personal.

He looked about as he walked past the cells, checking on their current inhabitants. Nothing seemed to be amiss, though the weevil looked more irritated than usual, its short period of freedom making it even less amenable to imprisonment than it had been previously. Ianto had always sympathised with it, locked down here in the dark, away from its own kind, surrounded by alien creatures.

'You should have kept running,' he thought towards it, and he felt that alien stare stroke, surprisingly gentle, against his mind in response. They had always seemed to understand each-other, himself and Janet. Ianto had hated using her to find the Weevil-nappers.

She actually seemed to understand the concepts behind using her as bait, and, perhaps even more surprisingly, she seemed to have forgiven him for it. If her recent attitude towards Jack was any indication, she blamed him for the entire mess.

"I'm going down to the Archives," he told Owen, continuing his stroll past the cells.

"I thought you said you were going to bed." Owen asked slyly, fishing.

"I am."

"You have a bed in Archives?" he asked, his tone disbelieving.

Ianto did not reply.

Owen snorted. "I always knew you had no life."

"Will you be alright on your own?"

"Yeah, I think I can manage to watch a computer screen, Ianto. Flashing red means an incursion, doesn't it?" he asked, voice acid with sarcasm. His tone faded as he went on, muttering to himself. "God knows what we'll do if something actually happens. The state we're in, a lone weevil would disembowel us all." There was a click, then silence as Owen hung up the phone.

Ianto paused before the door to the Archives, tucking his phone back into his pocket. He entered the code automatically into the discrete keypad to the left of the doorway, then stood back as it swung open.

The hallway was dark, unlit. That was fine - he knew his way around down here like a blind man knew his own home. It was sometimes necessary to move around in the dark, in order to avoid the cameras. This was a rather large flaw in their security, in fact. He had been meaning to speak to the Captain about possibly installing infra-red . . .

He pulled the heavy metal door closed behind him and walked confidently through the black, each quiet footstep echoing eerily, comfortingly, off the close walls.

Four steps in, a gentle gust of air coming from a vent above lightly ruffled his hair.

Nine steps later, the echo dogging his footsteps seemed to pause slightly before returning, indicating a gap in the wall. He turned left, moving down the smaller corridor at right angles to the main hallway.

The corridor branched twenty paces down, and Ianto took the right path. A minute later, he took another left. His eyes had been seeing nothing for so long, they attempted to fill the void with phantom flashes of colour, ghostly streamers of hues he had no name for. The air became moist, slightly musty, so wet it nearly hurt his nose to breathe it in.

No-one else ever came down this far. In fact, no-one else knew it was here. One of his first acts after Jack took him on was to edit all copies of the maps made of this area.

He reached out a hand and trailed it lightly along the thick moss growing on the damp brick wall. It always surprised Ianto that moss was able to survive down here. These tunnels were very close to the sea, running underneath it in some parts, which is the damp came from. 'The salt must be filtered out of the water as it seeps through the earth,' he thought to himself. Otherwise, the moss would most likely have been killed off by the salt. He was curious enough about it to consider bringing Tosh down here - she had a bit of a green thumb. God, her garden . . . The thought was a passing one, though.

Considering what he kept down here, Ianto was reluctant to call any sort of attention to this section of the Archives, no matter how benign.

It was a good place to conceal something. He had even considered moving Lisa down here at one stage, after Owen had said something particularly disparaging to him, which Jack had overheard. Jack had ordered Owen to help out in Archives for a week as punishment. He still can't believe he managed to keep the curious and ever-prying Owen from finding her.

He had seriously considered moving her after that, and was dissuaded only by the time it would take for him to get to her down here if something went wrong.

. . . ninety-five. . . ninety-six . . . ninety-seven steps.

He stopped and turned to face the wall, trailing his fingers along until he came to a gap about one centimetre wide, running from the ground to the ceiling. He slipped a finger into the gap at the height his shoulder, pressing it against the small scanner concealed there. There was a rapid flash of red that illuminated the tunnel briefly, temporarily dispelling the ghostly colours clouding his vision. The scanner recognised his fingerprint on the first attempt, an almost unheard-of occurrence.

There was a gasp of escaping air from below eye level, and something hard impacted with his leg. He reached down and pulled on the section of wall that had come loose. The concealed half-door swung open, silent on well-oiled hinges.

He squatted down and ducked through the opening, emerging into a concealed room. He reached back and found the handle set into the metal backing of the door and pulled it shut behind him, then closed his eyes and reached up to click on the light switch.

Even through his eyelids the harsh fluorescent lighting burnt his eyes. He covered them with his hands and waited for them to adjust to the sudden brightness. After a minute he dropped his hands, then opened his eyes, surveying the contents of the room.

The concealed storage room was about five metres by five metres, half of it taken up by shelves of different sizes, containing a number of objects, ranging from the every-day to the exotic, objects that were deemed too dangerous to keep where anyone could access them, yet too valuable to throw away.

Most of the items contained in the room had been left there by his predecessor, a man by the name of Dr Harleinger. A well-respected scientist, a brilliant man by all accounts. He had been killed when one of the objects he was experimenting on unexpectedly gained sentience and had objected to being dismantled. Or should that be dissected, given that it was sentient?

'Only God knows why Jack replaced him with me.' Ianto thought to himself.

Ianto had also made a few contributions of his own. Some were objects that Jack had told him to 'get rid of', without specifying a means of disposal (needless to say, he had not informed Jack of their destination - his justification was that if Jack wanted to know, he would have asked), and other items he had found in the storage area that were possibly unsafe, or very rare and valuable.

He strode across the room to the shelf lining the far wall, where there was a long cylindrical object concealed in a piece of fabric, the item he had retrieved from Jack's safe earlier. He tucked it carefully into the waistband of his trousers.

Next to where the cloth-mufled object had sat, there was a large rectangular metal box. He wiped the dust from it carefully before picking it up. It was very heavy - the metal lining was at least a centimetre thick.

The item it contained was something that Ianto had salvaged from storage months ago, after Jack had destroyed its twin. It was a stroke of luck that he had managed to remove it before the Captain became aware of its existence. The substance it was made of was so rare, Ianto had taken the precaution of storing it in the thick metal box, which rendered it undetectable from any of their routine scans.

And, thinking of scans. . .

He replaced the box for the moment and withdrew from his pocket the scanner he had concealed there earlier. It was set to locate a small beacon, about the size of a five cent piece. He looked intently at the small illuminated screen, and saw that the beacon was still within the laboratory. So, unless Owen had removed the black shirt he had put on earlier, the beacon should still be concealed in the collar. 'That could mean that Owen is either still in the operating theatre, or he is wandering about the Hub shirtless, possibly looking for me,' he mused. Ianto hoped it was the former.

He replaced the scanner in his pocket and retrieved the box and moved towards the exit. As both his hands were busy, he rubbed his head against the switch until the lights switched off, then pushed at the door, hard, with his foot. The door gave way and he ducked out, careful to move so that the wrapped knife didn't dig into his ribs.

Kicking the door closed again, he took a deep breath of the misty, dust-free air, before beginning his arduous journey back to the more well-known areas of the warren of catacombs beneath Roahl Dahl Plass.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

He stood, in total darkness, at the exit to the Archives, the box heavy in his hands, ribs sore from being poked, as the minutes silently ticked by on his internal clock.

He was alone, and it was dark, so there was no need to check his watch, no need to keep up the necessary deception he had practiced since he was a child, a deception that had become a nervous habit.

Like all children of the Community, he had been presented with a watch, just before his first day of primary school. And like all of the Rift-born, for Ianto the watch was unnecessary. It was a prop, a pretty ornament, of no actual use. The Rift-born always knew 'when' they were.

He ran a caressing finger absently across the face time-piece wrapped around his wrist.

The children were given watches so there was always a logical explanation for why they always knew what time it was. To explain to a teacher why a particular student would always jump up from his desk and politely insist that he be allowed to have morning tea at precisely 11.30am, despite the clock at the back of the room saying it was only 11.25.

It seemed to be an unwritten law that all clocks in any government institution be either five minutes early or five minutes late.

He supposed the watches would likely seem an unnecessary caution to an outsider. Because the worst someone would think of a child who always knew what the time was, without or in spite of technological aid, was that the child was precocious, or maybe slightly odd.

This was why the watches were necessary. It's human nature, after all – that when someone has seen even a slight oddness in another, that person will look for more. The Rift-born had larger secrets to hide than possession of an internal clock.

Ianto sighed to himself, feeling the seconds crawl by. He wished now that he had programmed more frequent intervals into the camera schedule he had set up earlier. Except that if he repeated the same pattern too many times, he increased the likelihood that the changes would be noticed later.

Standing there, waiting impatiently, he could feel his thoughts catching up to him, feel the emotions he had pushed down and buried under purpose, stirring and twitching in the dark.

He inhaled sharply as an image sprung to mind, Jack's hand cold and still, nearly indistinguishable from the bleached-white sheets on which it was lying. It had looked so wrong, wrong in a way that had no logic. He was dead, after all. What reason would a corpse's hand have for not being still?

But it felt so wrong, to see Jack's hand lie there, immobile. Jack who could not help but use them to touch and fiddle with things, who would throw them up in exasperation, wave them around the place to illustrate a point, run them through his hair as they lay close together late at night . . .

Ianto took a deep breath, and focused closely on the seconds ticking by.

Tick . . . breath . . . tick . . . breath . . . tick . . . breath . . . tick . . . time.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Ianto threw the door open and walked hurriedly past the cells, keeping close to the right wall for the first few metres then quickly moving to the left side. He moved, fast and careful, through the invisible maze to the main area of the hub.

Pausing momentarily, he leaned his box up against the wall, freeing one hand to withdraw the scanner from his pocket. Owen had now moved to his desk near Tosh's. He sighed with relief. He had not liked the thought of manufacturing a minor emergency to keep him occupied.

He arrived in the mortuary and closed the door behind him, with twenty seconds left to spare. Leaning against the door for a moment to catch his breath, he took the time to survey the room. Gwen had not moved – she was still sleeping the sleep of the drugged, sprawled in the chair by Jack's body. Ianto winced slightly at volume of the echoing snores coming from that petite body. There was still nothing from Jack.

He walked forward, placed his burden on the ground, then pulled out the drawer neighbouring Jack's. It was, thankfully, empty. Ianto then lifted the box and placed it on the empty steel drawer, withdrew the wrapped object from his waistband and carefully placed it next to the box.

He turned to Jack, and stood, looking down at him. He placed his hands on his hips, and sighed.

It was time to get to work.


	5. Chapter 5

-1**RESURRECTION**

**Chapter Five**

It was time to get to work.

'Or, perhaps not.' Ianto thought to himself, wincing at the sudden whinnying snore issuing from Gwen's overactive mouth. He walked over to stand behind the chair, then swung her about, pushing her over to the far wall and placing her, facing the corner, a child in time-out.

Turning about, Ianto returned to Jack's side. Finally they were alone, and he was free to speak, words he had been unable to speak when Jack had been capable of hearing them.

"Do you remember our first time, Captain?" he asked, as he reached over and unpicked one of the corners of the wrapped parcel sitting on the drawer beside Jack's. Pressing the corner down, Ianto carefully unrolled the cloth, its contents gradually revealed as the folds of fabric were smoothed out.

"I still find it difficult to believe that I did that," he continued, "Rather unprofessional of me, propositioning you over Suzie's still-warm body." He used his fingers to comb the Captain's hair back into order. "What happened later, however . . . that, I have no difficulty in believing."

"You weren't going to leave me be, not until you had what you wanted. A rather unpleasant trait of yours, one you seem to have in common with Owen."

Examining the objects spread across the cloth, he carefully positioned the syringe and blade perpendicular to the drawer's edge, with five centimetres separating them. He picked up the remaining object, the dark mask, and turned back to Jack.

"Like him, once you've met someone reasonably attractive, you have to know what it's like to fuck them, at least once. And until you do, it seems to be all you think about. It's what drives most of your interaction with that person." He smiled slightly. "To be fair, though, you are much better at hiding it than Owen." Watching Owen panting after Gwen had been painfully entertaining, similar to that American show, Jackass. It really shouldn't be funny at all, but watching the idiots hurt themselves for no logical reason is fascinating. Like watching natural selection in progress.

He placed the deep blue sleeping mask over Jack's sightless eyes. He lifted Jack's head slightly, slipping the elastic underneath, so it ran behind his head and just under his ears.

"And then, once the object of your attraction has given in, and you've had sex a few times, you start to lose interest." He had seen it, and heard it, time and time again. He didn't know if Jack's exes actually sought him out, or if Jack just had so many that you couldn't help but walk into a pub, or a restaurant, or a bathroom and find someone bitching about or mooning over a certain Captain Jack. 'A slight exaggeration,' he thought to himself wryly, 'but still, it happened far more often than it should.'

"You were too persistent, and your attention was . . . distracting me. Preventing me from doing my job properly." He ran a finger over the small scar on his left hand, a gift from Jayne. Unspoken understanding or not, the Weevil was more than happy to try for an extra meal if not watched carefully.

"It was that look of yours, Jack. That hungry look. I have no difficulty in ignoring your flirting. It was the intent I could see in your eyes that got to me, made me think . . ." He folded his arms across his stomach. "I couldn't help but wonder what you were thinking of doing to me, when you looked at me like that. I did not want your attention, but I admit I was curious as well." He coughed quietly, clearing his throat.

"So I knew I would surrender eventually, if only so you'd leave me alone. I thought it best to happen at my instigation, rather than me giving into one of your advances. That way I could maintain at least some control over the situation." He frowned slightly, remembering.

"Our first time . . . I knew you blamed yourself for what happened to Suzie, that you took what Gwen said to heart. And it's true, you were partly to blame. But so was I. I was too wrapped up in Lisa to realise something was wrong the first time around, and the second time . . . I was picking things up from her, but they were too faint to read. Quite possibly as a result of her being dead. I could have tried, could have made a physical connection, but she was a living corpse, Jack. I didn't want to touch her, didn't want to know what she was feeling." He frowned, angry at himself. "My squeamishness almost got Gwen killed." He reached a hand out and gently stroked Jack's cold cheek. "So part of the fault lies with me as well."

"However, I do believe that most of the guilt resides with Suzie Costello. Regardless of her history, she was an adult, Jack. She was at least partly responsible for her own decisions." He stroked a thumb underneath his chin, then withdrew his hand.

"So, anyway. As we were standing there in the morgue, I saw the expression on your face as you looked down at her. It seemed to me as though you weren't even there . . . your eyes stared down at her body, unseeing, your mind focused on something else, something distant and terrible. I wanted to bring you back . . . and we both needed to forget our guilt, for awhile at least. Which is why I chose that moment to give you my 'stopwatch' line."

"Afterwards, when we lay sprawled, panting across your desk, you asked me why. A question I imagine you haven't had to ask often in that situation, my arrogant Captain. And the answer I gave you? I told you I was tired of being alone." He tugged at the cuff of his jacket, trying to straighten the sleeve's seams, then froze when he realised what he was doing. He was fiddling nervously whilst having a conversation with a corpse. He resolutely folded his arms, determined to have this out.

"It was meant to be a lie, Jack. I didn't want give you the real reasons. I didn't want to talk about Suzie, and I'm sure my curiosity was self-evident. Mostly, though, I didn't want to admit that I slept with you so you would leave me be."

He leaned back against the makeshift bench, unconcerned that numerous corpses had been housed there, in various stages of decay. He knew it was clean - he disinfected all the unoccupied drawers on a regular schedule.

"I understood, later on, when I began looking forward to seeing you, when that one time became two, then three, four and five, six, when you showed no sign of becoming bored with me . . . I realised that I had told you the truth. I was tired of being alone. I had seen what it had done to Suzie, how it had twisted her, giving the glove a hold so it could twist her even further."

He reached out and ran a caressing finger along the hilt of the weapon lying on the drawer behind him.

"I was tired of being alone, and you . . . you were safe, Jack. I didn't have to hide things from you. Well, actually I did, but you knew about Torchwood. So I was, I am, hiding less from you than I am from anyone else, excluding my family."

"You were safe, because your mind was closed to me. I couldn't know what you felt unless you told me, and I couldn't influence your emotions, couldn't make you fall in love with me, couldn't make you hate me."

Ianto grasped the heavy metal object his fingers had been exploring, the hilt cold and hard in his tightly-clenched hand.

"Then, after the encounter on the cliff, when I began the long, slow fall. . . You were safe, Jack, because you would never leave Torchwood. Safe, because you couldn't die. Because you would always be here." His voice fell into a whisper. "Because you would never leave me."

His next words were low, intense and angry. "I hate that I need you so much, Jack."

He held the knife aloft, prepared to strike, the fluorescent yellow light gleaming dully along the length of the blade. 'The spines on the side are going to make a mess when I pull it out,' Ianto thought, an insane practicality.

Looking down at Jack's exposed chest, he hesitated for a moment.

It's necessary, he told himself harshly, but still he hesitated, caught by the memory of the last time they had been together.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

His exploring fingertips and palms, delighting in the smoothness of Jack's stomach, fingers roaming upwards until they encounter the rough patch of the hair at his chest, loving the contrasting textures.

Jack's arms wrap around him, caressing hands travel over Ianto's back, running skilled fingers up and down his spine, chasing warm and hot chills.

Jack's hands grasping hot and tight on Ianto's upper arms, pulling him up further onto his chest, until they were face to face.

Jack's mouth, eating at his, becoming more desperate as Ianto moved his hands further down, trailing manicured nails over tender, sensitive skin.

This was the first time the words were spoken, the only time, in the heat of passion but before losing control.

Jack's mouth falls away from his, head sinking further into the pillows, just far enough that Ianto can see his lips part, know for sure that he is speaking.

"I love you," he says quietly.

Ianto looks down at him, eyebrows rising in an involuntary gesture of disbelief. 'He can't be serious,' he thinks incredulously, examining his face closely.

Jack's expression is open, dark blue eyes staring intently into his. 'He is serious,' Ianto realises, and his mind freezes in motionless panic.

Their eyes each hold the other still, until the silence grows so loud he can no longer stand it.

He follows Jack down, lips meeting hard, bruising. Hands plunging downward, eliciting a sudden groan from beneath Ianto's seeking tongue.

An ecstatic diversion, a distraction from Jack's confession and his silently-asked, unanswered question.

Later, they lie sprawled together, sweat-soaked limbs tangled. Their breathing is loud, echoing in the small room. 'Gods, Jack,' Ianto thinks to himself sadly, staring up at the distant ceiling, as Jack's fingers gently stroke the skin on the inside of his elbow. 'Why did you have to make this complicated?'

Everything had been under control, before. His own feelings had been tidied away, neatly filed in the dark of his mind. All he had needed to do was wait for the emotion to fade away, as he had felt happen to others who had fallen in love with someone who couldn't love them back. Fade away, re-focus on someone or something else, or decompose into bitterness and hate.

'I can't do this again,' he thinks, ignoring the slight stinging in his eyes. 'I don't want to hurt anymore.'

Lisa had taught him so much. She had shown him how you can use a chocolate biscuit as a straw to drink coffee, had trained him to shoot with her automatic pistol until he was a better shot than she was. She had demonstrated how you can record over protected videotapes by applying a bit of sticky-tape, and had learned with him what not to do when trying to pitch a tent.

She had taught him that the people you care about, the people that care about you, can make you writhe in agony, rip your soul to shreds, pull you down so far that you doubt you'll ever see daylight again.

'He loves me,' Ianto thinks to himself, and he is dizzy with wonder and despair. 'This isn't supposed to happen. How could he possibly love me?'

When he regains his breath, he wordlessly disentangles himself from Jack and stands. He retrieves his clothes from where he had hung them earlier, and begins to pull them on with economic precision, no movement wasted.

He can feel Jack's eyes on him, and part of him wishes he could read Jack, feel what he feels, know for certain that he meant what he said. The greater part, the majority behind this slow and controlled flight, thinks he is better off not knowing, pretending that nothing was said.

So he dresses himself, and when he is done he begins to walk towards the ladder, stops at its base. "I'll see you on Monday, Sir," he says. An intentional slip, an attempt to distance himself.

"Goodnight, Ianto," Jack replies, and Ianto winces slightly at the hint of hurt in his tone.

Against his better judgement he walks back over to the tiny bed and leans over, giving him a brief kiss.

"Goodnight, Captain."

Then he departs, leaving the unasked question unanswered.

That was their last moment alone before Bilis took Jack and Tosh. Their last private moment, until now.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

-

"It's necessary," he told himself harshly, and the knife plunged downwards.

It impacted with Jack's chest with a dull thud of a heavy punch, a sickening crunch as it impacted with and shattered part of his ribcage, a wet squelch as it passed through his still heart, a second crunch through the ribs along his back, and a sharp clang as it hit the metal drawer beneath him.

Ianto stepped back and looked down, shuddered slightly as he saw what he had done.

"I hope that doesn't scar, Jack," he said, voice sodden with black humour, "Because if it does and I survive this, I doubt I'm likely to live for too long after your next detailed self-assessment in the bathroom mirror."

He left the knife where it was, pinning Jack to the drawer, and turned back to the metal box. Holding it steady with one hand, he ran a nail along the seam near the top of the box. There was a faint click as he hit the catch. He swung the lid open, then slid a hand inside, cautiously withdrawing its contents. He moved out from between the morgue drawers, walking to Jack's other side, where he would have more room.

Gripping the wrist of the metal gauntlet with his left hand, he slipped his right hand into the dark interior, shifting his fingers until they aligned. He held his gloved right hand upwards, twitching his fingers until the Risen-Mitten settled more firmly against his hand.

It was slightly too large, so that moving the articulated metal fingers of the glove required exaggerated flexing of his own fingers, inside.

He wondered if the first glove was the same size as this, or if this was larger. Ianto didn't know. He hadn't used it, had avoided all contact with it once Suzie figured out what was needed to make it work. An empath and a mysterious alien glove that fed on empathy did not seem a combination likely to end with fluffy kittens and chocolate.

Ianto turned his hand this way and that, slightly puzzled. The glove seemed oddly light, now that he was wearing it.

He shrugged to himself. fatalistic. He'd come too far to stop now, especially for a detail so insignificant. Besides, this wasn't the first time one of their artefacts had ignored the known laws of physics.

"Like I said, Captain," he said as his metal-encased hand reached down towards Jack. "Gloves come in pairs." He cupped the side of Jack's cold face in his hand, careful not to displace the mask. And he waited.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Ianto stood by Jack's side, stroking a dull-grey thumb across his white cheek. The cool metal gradually grew colder against his skin, so slowly it was almost unnoticed. It seemed to seep from the glove into the rest of the room, until he was shivering, despite the suit he was wearing.

Ianto inhaled sharply in surprise, then coughed as the icy air pierced his lungs with needles. Jack's skin was glowing slightly, shining in the gradually darkening atmosphere until it was the only thing he could see, the only thing that seemed real. Even Gwen's cavernous snoring seemed to become quieter, more distant.

He looked away from Jack for a moment, looked up, to the sides, looked behind him . . . there was nothing but black, the walls had disappeared, the floor and the ceiling devoured by darkness, leaving him in standing, or floating, only God knew, in limbo or purgatory or death or fuck knows where, another thing only God knew, and another thing He wasn't likely to share.

Quickly he glanced back down at Jack, and was almost surprised to see that he was still there. The drawer he had been resting on seemed to have vanished with the rest of the room, leaving him floating in mid-air. Except, there wasn't air. No atmosphere. The almost imperceptible movement of air-born particles and gasses against the skin was obvious in its absence. But he was still breathing, could still feel his lungs expanding and contracting.

Ianto's eyes moved to the glove still caressing his face, and he was shocked to see that it appeared to be empty. Though he could still feel the metal around his hand, he could now see inside the glove. His hand wasn't there. Where his arm had been there was nothing.

Looking down, he could see the same blackness where his body should have been. He had no body, but he was still breathing. He could feel his arm, yet it wasn't there. He shifted his feet. He could still feel them move, but he could feel nothing underneath them, as if he were weightless. He moved what he felt was his hand through where he felt his stomach should be. There was no impact. He wasn't there, yet he was.

Ianto fought to keep calm. This was nothing like Jack had described, nothing like what Gwen had experienced. "A rope from your heart to the glove, Suzie?" he muttered to himself, sarcastic.

Surprisingly, he could still hear his own voice, perfectly clear and undistorted by echoes. Why should that be surprising, he didn't know. There was nothing there for the sound to bounce against.

Actually, when he thought about it, there was nothing for his vocal chords to vibrate either. No particles in the air, no atmosphere to carry the vibration up to the eardrum for translation, no fucking eardrum, for that matter, so how the hell is he even hearing anything? Not that he could hear anything aside from the rapid breaths whistling past lips that weren't there, a sure sign he was heading for an overdose of oxygen and hyperventilation and that was all he fucking needed at the moment, wasn't it? Jack's dead and now he's probably just as dead, and a fat lot of use he is to Jack now, isn't he? The others will wake up and find me and won't know what happened, Gwen will try to use the glove because that's the sort of person she is and Owen will try and stop her because that's the sort of person he is and Tosh would probably side with Owen because Suzie's last stand really shook her up and she wouldn't want the same thing happening to him or Jack, undead and walking and killing Gwen, and didn't Suzie say something about death? that there was nothing there, and this sure as hell seemed like nothing, but that there was something out here waiting -

'THIS ISN'T HELPING,' he shouted, not vocally but in his mind, as loud as he possibly could because he was now breathing so rapidly he couldn't get enough air to even speak.

'Come on, Ianto,' he thought to himself, 'you work for Torchwood, you deal in the weird and inexplicable. Just think of this as a type of sensory deprivation …. And DON"T think of the fact that sensory deprivation has been used as a torture technique … and you'll be fine.' He forced his breathing back under conscious control and slowed it to a slightly lower than normal rate, deep breaths, in and out, intervals of five seconds exactly. 'Jack needs you. Just think.'

A minute twenty-three seconds later and he was calm enough to start considering his situation.

'My body must still be back at the Hub,' Ianto thought. 'After the connection was made, my consciousness must have followed the 'rope' here.' He sighed. He had known that being Rift-born would affect the glove's performance, which was why he had avoided using it before. He hadn't thought it would suck him into another dimension, though.

'Either that or the glove took everything I had and killed me." He frowned. "Though that wouldn't explain why I can still feel my body.'

"Phantom limbs," came a near-silent whisper, from somewhere behind him. "Phantom body."

He turned around, surveying the void, and was surprised to see a light in the distance, glowing bright gold. It was the same colour as Jack's body, except far, far more bright.

"Can I help you?" he called out, a reflexive response, ridiculous under the circumstances.

'There's something out there, in the dark…' Suzie's words ran through his head.

The gold glowed brighter, and what was a flicker of flame similar you'd get from a lighter was growing rapidly larger as it approached. Ianto inwardly cursed Suzie for being so close-mouthed, and moved to stand in front of Jack, offering what protection he could.

Judging distance when you have no frame of reference is rather difficult. One might say impossible. The figure was as tall as him, at least, but he couldn't tell how far away it was, so for all he knew it could be standing half a kilometre away. Which would make it bigger. A lot bigger.

"What has he done now?" The figure sighed, sounding resigned. Like a parent whose child has asked for 'one more turn' on the swing.

Ianto hadn't known what to expect, but it definitely hadn't been that. 'Well,' he thought fatalistically, 'at least it isn't trying to devour my soul.'

"He . . . " Ianto swallowed nervously, eyes following the flickering at the edges of the apparition, unable to look at her full-on. "Do you mean Jack?"

"Is he still going by that name?"

'He never ceases to surprise,' Ianto thought to himself, wondering how Jack could possibly have come to be on first-name terms with a glowing, flickering light who appeared to be quite at home in death. Or wherever he was.

"Well . . . yes. Captain Jack Harkness."

"I'd have thought he would have changed it a number of times by now."

'Apparently not,' he thought to himself. "How do you know the Captain?" he said, asking the obvious question to give his mind time to work out how to approach this unique situation, a situation he didn't have a planned response for.

"He travelled with me and my companions for a time. Years ago, now" He could hear a slight smile in her tone.

He was suddenly struck by the absurdity of it all, him standing next to Jack's dead body, himself apparently without a body, speaking to a glowing ball of light as casually as if they were standing in a park somewhere, rather than in a dark and empty place he suspected might be death.

'Well,' he thought to himself, 'I don't know if I have anything left to lose, but I think I'll assume I'm alive until proven otherwise. So, everything to lose, no weapons, can't even punch the thing, what with my current state of bodylessness, don't know what it is or where I am … My only option seems to be to play nice.'

"I'm sorry, but I do not believe I have had the pleasure of making your acquaintance," he bowed deeply, playing the butler to the hilt. "My name is Ianto Jones. I work for the Captain."

She laughed deeply, a rich and vibrant sound. "I assure you the pleasure is all mine, Mr Jones." She paused for a moment. "I've been known by many names, but you may call me Bad Wolf."


	6. Chapter 6

**Resurrection **

**Chapter 6**

She laughed mischievously. "I assure you the pleasure is all mine, Mr Jones." She paused and the glowing ball began to elongate, stretching up and slightly out, her brilliance fading slightly as the light became less concentrated, until she had what could be described as a 'body', a flame bound in near-human silhouette.

"I've been known by many names, but you," her golden head tipped slightly to the side, her tone suggested lowered lashes and downcast eyes, a picture of flirtatious mock-modesty, '_you _may call me Bad Wolf."

'Bad Wolf,' Ianto repeated to himself silently. He knew that name. The Big Bad Wolf. Darlig Ulv Stranden, Bad Wolf Bay, remote coastal area of Norway. Bad Wolf Press, a business that created and sold educational music. Words and images flickered past his mind's eye - too many to count, but only one stood out. Only one had a connection to Torchwood, and so to Jack.

The Bad Wolf Virus, an archivist's and historian's nightmare, a migraine-inducing subject to the former Upper Management at Torchwood One. The thought erased any trace of levity Ianto had felt. If there was indeed a connection between this creature and the virus, he would need to be cautious, in spite of the being's seeming innocence. The innocence could be a disguise, after all. He smiled slightly - a Bad Wolf in sheep's clothing.

Her voice shifted slightly as she continued, voice deeper but still feminine. "It's an odd name, I know. It was practical under the circumstances, though. Not a name you're likely to forget, Bad Wolf. Not a name to go unnoticed, or forgotten."

'The wolf, as far as I know, has not been spread from Earth to other planets,' Ianto considered, 'and she knew that I would consider her name unusual. So, she has some knowledge of Earth fauna and culture, doubtless uncommon amongst extra-terrestrial species. I imagine a working knowledge of Earth, or at least English, customs would be considered as useful to your average alien life-form as having the complete dialogue of the movie 'But I'm a Cheerleader' memorized would be to a human.'

He did not consider the fact that she was speaking perfect English to be useful in determining her origins and intent - translation devices were common among many star-faring species.

"I would think the possibility of your presence going unremarked or unremembered would be remote," he commented, and hoped he hadn't been too obvious with his attempt at ingratiating flattery.

"Really," she exclaimed, her tone amused yet skeptical, completely at odds to her earlier flirtatiousness. 'I've been spending too much time with Jack,' Ianto thought to himself wryly. 'I'm certain I used to be more subtle than this.'

"What do I look like, then?" she continued.

'Can she not see herself either?' Ianto wondered. "You are human-shaped, coloured like a flame, shining white-hot in your centre, flaring out to flickering reddish amber at your extremities. Far too bright to look at directly, far too hot to touch, but the urge is there to do so regardless, because to be blinded and burnt seems a small price to pay for witnessing such a perilous beauty." Now, that was definitely too much. Intentionally so, this time. A second attempt at ingratiation through humor.

"Get off it," she laughed, not at all embarrassed. She flared again, stretching out to dispel more of the darkness before shrinking again to slightly more than her previous size. As he watched, some definition was added to the being's 'face'. Twin curves of a darker flame arced over two brightly glowing orbs - ghostly neon eyes, blue as the heart of the hottest flame. Mirrored cheekbones were marked by burnt orange streaks, underscored by reddish-brown shadow. Her lips were red as cherries, like glowing embers. Her head remained unchanged, smooth and bald, her body slim and androgynous.

Ianto blinked rapidly to clear the after-images from his eyes. He stopped blinking when he realized that though he had no eyelids here to close, his sight still responded as if he had, alternately darkening and brightening. His breathing began to pick up slightly, facing one strangeness too many. He grasped his hand tight about Jack's upper arm, the only reality in this cold, empty nowhere.

He'd have thought he'd be immune to oddness by now, after the strange and often disturbing things he had felt through his 'gift', and the discoveries those feelings often led to. He should be used to the out-of-the-ordinary, because after all, he had seen it every day since joining Torchwood.

But even after all these years, the unexpected always left him feeling out of his depth and inadequate. His fear of the unknown could be paralysing, and the only way to keep the fear at bay was to gather information. Which was why he learnt all he could, compulsively studying and reading, researching facts and figures, observing the world around him. Because the more knowledge he had, the less often he was surprised by anything. He knew it was impossible to know all, to be prepared for every situation. However, despite the illogic behind it, the compulsion to learn and remember as much as possible was a useful one.

He was completely out of his depth now, but he forced his breathing to steady, as his mind did what it always did when trying to cope with the unexpected – it began to seek information, the questions he wanted, needed to ask this creature began to pile one on top of the other, writhing like live things trying to escape his tightly sealed lips.

'What are you,' he thought to himself. 'Where am I, how did I get here, why can I not see myself, why is Jack floating in midair, _how _do you know Jack, and can you save him?' And a practical, cold and despised voice added, 'and what will it cost me if you do?'

These were questions he refused to ask directly, because to do so would revealed a lack of knowledge, and ignorance was a weakness.

He did not know what this creature's intentions were, or even what it was, and refused to expose any vulnerability until there was no other option.

There were, however, more subtle ways of obtaining information than asking.

"You said 'we', though," he stated, making his tone casually curious, "when you explained the reason you took the name 'Bad Wolf.' There are others of your kind out here?"

"No," she said, and her eyes stared off into the black, her voice suddenly old and weary, seeming to echo with millennia of loneliness. "I am the last."

So the 'companions' she mentioned earlier are of a different species. He wondered what had happened to the others of her kind.

"Well, what are you doing out here, then?" she asked, another unexpected shift, sounding young again, slightly confrontational, uncomfortable with silence.

"I came after him," he replied, gesturing to Jack's body, still floating motionless in the black.

"Erm . . . what do you mean, you came after him?" she asked. The figure took a step closer, and Ianto moved back slightly, attempting to keep the distance between them even. He was careful to stay in contact with Jack, not sure what would happen if the connection was broken, and not particularly wanting to find out.

"He's not here," she stated, voice matter-of-fact.

Ianto frowned, or imagined he frowned, and tightened the grip of his unseen hand around Jack's ankle. He glanced down. Yes, Jack was still there, floating at what would have been waist-height. He looked back up at the human-sized flare. "He does seem to be right there." His body, anyway.

"Yeah . . . but he's not." The Wolf's voice had changed again, becoming slightly deeper, masculine, 'his' words clipped.

Ianto couldn't tell whether . . . 'it' . . . was being deliberately irritating and cryptic, or if he was anthromorphising, reading human motivations from the behavior of a being that possessed completely alien thought processes and methods of interaction.

"Sorry," Ianto replied patiently, "but if you could explain . . . if he's not there, then why can I see him?"

"Well, you're here," Bad Wolf replied, and the logical female was back. "Why can't you see you?"

"I imagine it is because I am _not_ here. Or rather my consciousness is but my body remains where I left it."

'Or I'm dead,' he added silently.

"Very good," Bad Wolf replied, voice masculine again, and enthusiastic as a schoolteacher praising a first-grader that had performed well above all negative expectations. "Now, could you tell me how you got here?"

"I'll be more than happy to," Ianto said calmly, "after you've explained to me what you mean when you tell me this isn't Jack."

"Oh, it _is _Jack." Ruby lips widened into a cheeky grin. "He's just not here."

Ianto raised an eyebrow and looked as close as he could at the centre of the glowing being, arms folded across his chest, and began a silent count. One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . five . . . six . . . seven . . . eight . . . nine . . .

"Oh, alright," the Wolf replied, exhaling impatiently. 'His' voice increased in pace as he continued. "I was going to have you tell me how you think you got here first so I could explain Jack's situation to you in terms you would understand, but . . ." the being paused for a moment, as if waiting for an interruption. Ianto did not oblige. "Jack is still . . . wherever he was before you left him to come here. That is Jack you're seeing, but he's not here. You're looking through a . . . a gap. No, not a gap, a window. A thin spot in the Veil, the wall between your world and here." The beings brows narrowed, and a furious glare was directed in Ianto's direction.

"And since this little almost-tear is completely _your fault_," a new voice this time, a strident female tone, thickened with a loud cockney accent, "you had better hope it will repair itself once you leave or by God there will be consequences! All sorts of nasties will be trying to get through, and if they manage it I have to say you'd probably deserve all the horrid things they'd do to you if they caught you. Stupid boy."

Well, that was . . . unexpected. It was so odd, how suddenly the Wolf changed. One moment as old as the universe, the next so young and wide-eyed. Authoritive then enthusiastic, meek then cheeky. And now haranguing and accusing. Addressing them was becoming confusing.

Ianto thought for a moment, trying to find fault with the explanation, to see if the Bad Wolf was deceiving him. "Why is it only him that I see?" he asked after a moment, ensuring there was no accusation in his tone, that it was full of friendly curiosity alone. "If this is a window, I should be seeing his surroundings as well, not just the Captain."

"Well, it's a very specific window," Bad Wolf said, in what Ianto decided to call the Enthusiastic Man persona, said impatiently. "It's because you're concentrating on seeing him. You could see the entire room if you wanted." The words began to run together as 'he' spoke, speeding up and becoming more animated, almost manic, outer edges flickering at a rather alarming rate. "You could see the surface of the moon or the far reaches of the Necromian Empire, into the heart of the Sentient Forests of Helinda, the Universal Bazaar on the Market-world of Youloun, or the ducks in the pond at Centenary Lakes. That's in Cairns, by the way. Queensland, Australia, Earth. Gorgeous place. Provided there are ducks in the pond, that is."

The Necromian Empire was the only place it mentioned that sounded familiar, the name sparking a twinge of recognition. A moment of searching, and he had it. An ovoid matte-black container measuring almost one metre wide, with a circumference of one and a half metres. It held inside it the history of the entire Necrominian civilisation, written in an alien script consisting of multiple coloured dots, dashes and sweeping arcs; pictures and figurines of furry grey creatures, quadrupedal, herbivorous judging by the blunt teeth displayed in both its mouths, with limpid green eyes; genetic material from a multitude of extraterrestrial species, all seeming to come from the same basic structure. The contents were remarkably similar to those stored in unmanned human space craft, on the off-chance that it would be discovered by an extraterrestrial species. It was a discovery that had nearly sent Tosh into hysterics with excitement, with the realisation that humans weren't the only species reaching out to the stars, looking for friendship or trade, someone to listen. Someone to affirm their own existence, their place in the universe.

The large, black egg-shaped object had been found among a pile of debris from the Rift, like a message in a bottle washed up from the ocean. Tosh had been bitterly disappointed when they found that the civilization had imploded into civil war and destroyed itself long before their plea for friendship was found.

Bad Wolf sighed, and continued in the voice of the flirtatious personality Ianto had spoken in earlier, the Young Girl. Her tone was wistful. "You can see . . . anything, _everything_, from here." There was a brief silence before she continued briskly. "You have to know what to look for, though. And it takes quite a lot of practice to be able to control it properly. Honestly, I'm surprised you can look through at all."

Bad Wolf paused. "You must want to see him very badly," she said, tone sympathetic.

"I was under the impression that the Necromian Empire fell some time ago." Ianto deflected. He squinted slightly as he calculated. "Five-thousand, seven hundred and . . . well, that's as close as I can figure. The records weren't exact."

"Aren't you the knowledgeable one," Bad Wolf said, and the no-nonsense, practical girl was back again, a touch of admiration in her tone. The Sensible Woman. "You're from early 21st century Earth, yeah?"

Ianto nodded, hoping she didn't question why this early twenty-first century human had knowledge of extraterrestrial civilizations in a world where alien existence was still largely in doubt. 'Mentioning Torchwood may not be the best way to gain this creature's assistance,' he thought to himself wryly.

Satisfied with his non-verbal response, the Sensible Woman continued. "This place, it's a gap between time and space, between dimensions, life and death. It has been known as the Gap, the Chasm, the In-Between, the Timeless Place, the Empty Land . . . but it's most commonly known as the Void." The manic one, the Enthusiastic Man took over. "Not very original, I know. I wanted to call it Floyd. Floyd the Void. But would the Time-Lords listen? Nah. Bunch of old sticks in the mud . . ."

The Time Lords. She . . . The Young Girl had named itself Bad Wolf, and now it said it has had contact with the Time Lords. The Bad Wolf Virus was a computer virus that affected all records held in relation to a number of young men and women, from various times throughout history, nothing in common except that most of them were from England, and they were all involved with The Doctor. The Doctor's companions. The Doctor - the last of the Time Lords.

"Anyway," the Wolf continued, oblivious to his revelation, "it was called the Void. The emptiness, the nothing between space and time. And you," it pointed a fire-wreathed arm in his direction, the tone still that of the Enthusiastic Man, but less mischievous now, quite serious. "You shouldn't be here. I believe you owe me an answer, Mr Jones."

"I suppose I do." A creative answer that somehow avoided all mention of Torchwood. If this creature was connected with the Doctor, it doubtless had no reason to be fond of the Institute.

'It would be ridiculous to believe that this creature wasn't somehow involved with Jack's . . . condition.' Ianto thought, considering. 'That it should be here by chance when Jack just happened to die and I slipped thought the Veil . . . is too much coincidence for me to believe.' He frowned slightly. 'There is nothing to be gained by withholding Jack's secret from it if it already knows, and confessing it would perhaps convince Bad Wolf that I trust it. Which would, of course would make it more willing to trust me.'

"Jack is . . . unusual, among our kind." He swiped his tongue over invisible lips, as if torn over whether to continue. It was true that he couldn't see himself, however as it had been responding to his nonverbal cues, it apparently could see him. "When our hearts stop beating, when our brains stop functioning, we die. I'm not certain if that is the case amongst your kind, but once a human is dead, he doesn't come back." Unless the Captain happened to be at hand. "Jack dies. But he comes back." He looked down at the body, then walked around, coming nearer to the creature, acting unconcerned at its proximity. He ran his fingers through Jack's short hair. "I've watched him die, so many times." He glanced up at the creature, as if to gauge its reaction, pretending to be unsure if it would believe him. The creature's silhouetted head was cocked slightly to the side, as if listening intently. "The first time, he was electrocuted. Twice. Truly, it would have been possible for a normal human to survive, but I saw his face. He was gone."

He had witnessed enough death to recognise it in the slackness of Jack's features, the boneless twist of his body upon the floor. Of course, Ianto had been approaching that state himself at the time, after Lisa had thrown him across the Hub. His vision had been darkening, eyes near sightless as he slipped away. He could have been mistaken.

"Then he came back."

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

He recalled being torn from the black, gasping air into empty lungs, the stabbing of harsh fluorescent light into his suddenly wide-open eyes, the cool cement under him not as cold as it should have been, in comparison to his shivering body.

Cradled in Jack's arms, staring up into pale blue eyes that held a greater depth of emotion than he had previously thought his flighty Captain capable of.

And he was caught, until he heard Lisa's screams echoing through the base.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"He has also died, several times consecutively, from carbon monoxide poisoning."

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He had convinced Jack that they should take his car for the night. Or rather, he had politely refused to go anywhere if Jack insisted on taking the SUV. The Captain might like the attention their vehicle attracted, but Ianto preferred to go unnoticed. If he had had his way, the SUV would have been traded in for a less conspicuous model long ago.

He had steadfastly ignored Jack's protestations that the valet would take one look at it and roll laughing into the street. It was a moot point, after all, because no civilian valet was going anywhere near his car.

Ianto had made a number of . . . modifications . . . to the Audi A4 saloon, and he wanted to relax tonight, not have to concoct a story to explain why he had a small arsenal of firearms and light artillery concealed beneath the back seat. He knew the likelihood of the cache being found was rather remote. That was irrelevant - Ianto was a great believer in Murphy's Law.

A belief he discovered was fully justified when he had become tired of watching Jack primp and gone up to the reception area to collect his car keys . . .

They had used the tracking beacon to locate the car, and found it not far from the Hub. John Ellis had gone home, his second return after a fifty year absence.

When Jack had gone after the former Sky Gypsy passenger, Ianto had remained at the base, wondering why he hadn't seen this coming. He had known John was up to something, when he caught him behind the reception desk. There had been a slightly guilty look in his eye, a tiny tremor in his voice as he murmured both apology and excuse in the same breath; a dull, grinding despair invading Ianto's mind before the other man moved out of range.

An hour passed without word from either of the men. Ianto sighed, called the restaurant and cancelled their reservations. He didn't bother to reschedule - the Wolbex migration was due to begin the next day, and there would be no more nights off for some time.

Resigned to staying in tonight, he changed into one of his working suits and clipped his phone to the waistband, in case Jack called needing something. Not that he expected any assistance would be required, but Ianto had discovered the hard way that Fate was never one to avoid temptation.

He moved down into to the bowels of the Hub, to a cavernous, caustic-smelling room containing two rows of fourteen squat, steaming vats filled with roiling acidic and basic solutions, their contents labeled by neat hand-written printing on white, stained and half-eaten paper signs attached to their ridged sides.

He turned to the small station by the doorway, taking a heavy black leather apron down from its hook and pulling it down his head. He reached his arms back and fastened the strings securely. Next came the thick, protective goggles and the toxin-filtering mask. He gathered a palmful of powder from an open container, rubbing it over his hands to absorb any sweat, then slipped the white-dusted appendages inside the thick leather gauntlets, black to match the apron (one of Jack's innovations, of course), which covered his hands and up to his elbows.

Ianto then walked down the isle between the vats, over to the organic waste container that ran the entire length of the far wall. He reached in and pulled out something that looked like a giant red lobster claw attached to an almost-human arm, smeared with vile streaks of purple. He surveyed the remaining contents of the bin with something approaching dismay. How had he let Jack talk him in to going out, with this much work to be done?

He set to work, an effective distraction from his worry about what was wrong with John, what condition Jack would be in if something happened to the man that he could have prevented. An effective, as well as useful, distraction. The corpses weren't going to dissolve themselves, after all.

"Chitinous substance," Ianto murmured to himself. "low to medium strength acid, vat three." He strode over to the appropriate vat and slid the limb carefully into the liquid, ignoring the furious hiss as the claw was eaten away.

He continued to work for another two hours, then stopped, though the container hadn't even been half-emptied.

Jack still hadn't called.

He stripped the gear off cautiously, careful not to let the acid-splattered material touch his skin, and quickly decontaminated the leather, before re-hanging it by the door. He re-locked the door behind him (because one of the useless-anywhere-else pieces of information he had picked up at Torchwood was that pterodactyls were quite handy at opening doors), then unclipped his mobile, checking for messages. Nothing.

Ianto did a quick sweep of the hub in case Jack had come back whilst he had been working, then checked the satellite feed to see if his car was still in the same position. It was, but now the SUV was also visible on the scan, parked not ten metres distant from his car.

Eyes fixed on the computer screen, he blindly dialed Jack's number. Five rings, but no answer.

"They might have gone down to the pub," he thought to himself, but dismissed the thought almost immediately. Jack would have known he'd worry. He would have called.

He collected all the items he was most likely to need, then packed them into a large briefcase. It probably would have been more practical to take one of the large black sports bags, but a passerby seeing a man in a suit carrying one would undoubtedly take notice, and possibly think Mafioso.

He had the taxi pick him up along the road outside the Plas. The driver looked slightly askance at him, doubtless thinking it odd to be collecting a suited Man carrying a rather large briefcase from the deserted Millennium Centre. The man would likely remember him, unfortunate but it couldn't be helped.

He stopped the taxi a block away from Mr Ellis' former residence, and waited until the driver turned a corner before walking further up the street.

Ianto breathed a sigh of relief to see the SUV still parked alongside the curb before the old-fashioned red brick building. It meant that Jack was probably still in the area, and he now had access to the equipment stored there if it was needed.

The satellite imagery had shown his car positioned perpendicular to the SUV, approximately seven metres away . . . seeing as it was not in the street, Ianto assumed that it was parked in the building's garage.

There did not seem to be anyone in the house, and no answer when he knocked. The house was quiet, apart from the sound of a car idling in the garage. Trying the door-handle, he was not surprised to find it unlocked. Jack was not one to lock a door behind him after breaking in.

The house was filled with old-fashioned but cheaply-made furniture, in surprisingly good condition considering its age. It was only a small place, and he had quickly finished searching the still, house, finding it deserted.

Having cleared the house, Ianto stepped thorough the adjoining door into the garage, where the car engine was still grumbling quietly.

What he saw first was his car, parked in the tiny garage, below precariously balanced shelves holding paint and power-tools. The next thing that registered was the silhouette of a head visible above the front driver's seat, lolling slightly to the side.

The following snapshot was of the rolled-up tie shoved into the exhaust pipe.

Ianto dropped his case and ran around to the driver's side of the car. Finding the door locked he grabbed a wrench from the shelf and smashed out the window of the back seat, to avoid showering John with the shards. He stripped off his jacket and wrapped it about his arm, and stretched it through the gap between the seat and the car-frame, straining to reach the lock. He heard it click, and withdrew his arm too hurriedly, hissing viciously as a remaining jagged blade opened up a gash along his inner arm where the jacket had fallen loose.

Ignoring the pain, he yanked open the driver's side door, switched off the ignition and tore out the car keys, throwing them aside, out of reach of the car's occupant.

Taking a deep breath, he leaned in to the carbon monoxide-drenched interior to undo

John's seatbelt, and swore internally at the sight of Jack slumped forward in the passenger seat, skin ashen, lips drawn back to reveal white teeth, his protruding tongue pink against the bleached enamel, fingers clawed and bloody. He forced himself to ignore Jack for the moment, released the catch and pulled John out, carefully laying him down on the paint-and-oil-stained floor.

Ianto knelt by his side, quickly examining the prone form.

He had been too late, of course. The man's lips were blue, skin delicate and paper-white, mouth slack and drool-encrusted, the bruises of lividity already showing where the un-pumped blood had pooled under his skin. Too late, again.

The car tilted at an unlikely angle as he stood. 'Vertigo,' he thought. 'An effect of inhaling concentrated carbon monoxide gas." He tried to keep his breaths shallow as he pulled himself upright. "There must be a large concentration for it to have effected me this quickly. Never should have filled the tank the other day . . . Next will come the headache,' and that thought was accompanied by a sharp ache behind his right eye, 'then exhaustion, slow suffocation, and death.'

He grabbed his wrench and staggered tiredly around to the passenger side. A spark of common sense made him try the handle first, and sure enough it opened, spilling Jack, who had been braced against the door, onto the hard concrete. Ianto grabbed the larger man's arms and, after a moment's thought, pulled him over the ground in the direction of to the doorway connecting the garage to the house, rather than the large fold-up door leading outside. The larger door would have cleared the gas quickly, but he did not want anyone to witness Jack's unique talent. Retcon use had doubled in the past year, and the budget would only cover so much.

He pulled Jack further down the carpeted hallway until he was clear of the door, then closed it behind them. Drowsy, he pressed his back against the wall and slid down, until he was sitting by Jack's side. Ianto breathed deeply, in an attempt to clear the poison from his system. After a moment he reached out a lethargic hand and traced a finger along the Captain's red-smeared hands. The blood was no longer flowing freely, congealing thickly against the open wounds. Jack's heart had stopped.

Focusing his bleary eyes carefully, he could see something stuck under his fingernails. Black . . . he scraped a small shard free and held it close to his face. It looked like the hard, plastic material used on the inside of car doors.

There was a choked gasp from the corpse lying against his thigh, and Jack was awake.

"How many times did you die in there, Jack?" Ianto asked, his tone curiously detached. Did it really matter? he thought tiredly, continuing to breath deeply.

"It got a bit blurry after the first three," Jack replied, his voice raspy and barely audible, quite ruining his attempt at offhandedness.

Ianto watched in dull fascination as small beads of crimson began to appear all over Jack's pale skin. He trailed a lazy finger along his limp arm, and it came away stained.

His action drew Jack's attention to the phenomena, and his eyes widened. "What . . . " His body trembled for a moment, and he glared down at it, as if trying to force his unresponsive muscles to move from sheer force of will.

"Breathe as deeply as you can." Ianto advised, tone flat. "You need to replace the oxygen you lost."

"What's with the bleeding?" he asked, sounding faintly curious and not at all concerned. He flicked a finger, splattering a small design of blood dots on the wall-papered walls.

This attitude knocked Ianto completely out of the carbon-monoxide-induced apathy he had been experiencing, into a battleground of emotion.

"I suspect this is your body's unorthodox attempt to clear the," he paused to take a breath, "toxins from your bloodstream." He kept his tone even, but inwardly the anger was wining. He stared at the blood almost running from Jack's pores, soaking the off-white carpet. "Unfortunately, whatever it is that's attempting to heal you appears to be too stupid to realize that humans need blood to live." His voice at the end of that sentence had been louder than he intended. Ianto paused for a moment to calm down, then fell back on his lecturing tone, the one he found most effective dealing with children, idiots, government officials and Owen. "Inhalation of high concentrations of carbon monoxide gas for even a short period of time causes the body to stop circulating oxygen, as the carbon monoxide takes it place on the hemoglobin contained in the red blood cells. As the body needs oxygen to fuel most of its activities, including thought, speech, muscle movement and _living_ " he said in his most sarcastic voice, "it would seem as though not a lot of planning went into this temporary suicide attempt of yours."

Jack opened his mouth to speak, but Ianto continued before he could get a word in.

"Unless of course it was your intention to remain trapped inside my car beside a corpse, being poisoned by the atmosphere and dying, then waking up and being unable to escape because there was only enough oxygen left in your bloodstream to fuel the muscles of your fingers so you could scrabble helplessly against the car door, then dying again and repeating the entire process over and over until I got concerned enough to come and find you." Ianto took a deep, calming breath, and the anger faded as he looked down at Jack, blue eyes vulnerable and stark against the red surrounding them. He reached into a pocket and began to wipe of the blood, ignoring Jack's weak protests.

"Yes, if that was your intention I would say your well thought-out and executed plan was a success."

The blood flow began to subside, leaving Jack's skin even paler under its red coating than it had been before. Near blood-less, but alive.

"I couldn't let him go alone, Ianto," he said quietly, and there was no apology in his tone.

Ianto looked up, away from those old, tired eyes and stared at the red dots that now decorated the otherwise pristine wall. "You're going to run of lives one day," he replied.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

He was suddenly back in the dark, and he shook his head sharply. 'It must be a kind of sensory deprivation,' he thought to himself. "The mind can't stand the lack of stimulus so attempts to fill the void with extremely vivid hallucinations, or in this case memories. It seemed so real it was almost as if I was there again.' He looked down, almost expecting Jack's blood to be on his hands, but all he saw was black.

Ianto's internal clock seemed to be on the fritz. He had no idea how long he had been silent, lost in thought. Time seemed to crawl by, dragging itself out until a second was like a minute, a minute an hour, an hour an eternity.

Bad Wolf did not seem to notice though. It still floated in the black, human-shaped and -spoken but alien, head tilted to the side as if listening intently.

"And he's been shot in the head. Twice that I've seen, though I suspect there have been more instances."

"He does seem to get shot in the head a fair bit doesn't he?" The cheeky Enthusiastic Man was back. "Must be that smug look – people can't help but try and wipe it off."

It broke the awkward silence that followed that statement by clearing its throat. "So, anyway, how did it happen this time?"

"There was this creature . . . " Abbaddon, Bringer of Darkness. It sounded like such a cliché. "I don't know what it was, but it came from the Rift. It was monstrous. Like something from a nightmare, that hideous thing you can see lunging at you from the corner of your eye but wake before you see it fully, just before it gets you." His breathing grew slightly ragged as he began to remember. "Except we did not wake . . ." The memories obscured his vision, and the scene rolled; the list of names was read out again, the lyrics to a soul destroying soundtrack, accompanied by a percussion of arrhythmic screams.

Him and Jack, standing in the street . . .

_Andrea Longstaff, mother of two, one lost to drugs and the street, the other still living at home, trying to be good and make up for her sister. . . _

Clinging to each-other as they heard it approach . . .

_George Matthews, not that good at schoolwork but brilliant on the soccer field. If he didn't get his grades up, his mother was threatening to make him quit the team . . . _

The ground trembling, falling away then surging beneath their feet . . .

_Anna Jones, owner of two long-haired Persian cats, pedigree though she kept them for company rather than show . . . _

Looking up over the rooftops, and seeing the tips of wickedly curved horns, and as it came closer the hellish blood-red eyes, the snarling muzzle . . .

_James Harrison, a man who had seen and lost too much, then lost the rest in the bottle, and the remaining dregs to the Beast . . . _

"Like a lunar eclipse it blocked the sun, its shadow blackened the streets to night while it alone shone in the dark."

_Alicia Morrison, pregnant with her first child and scared out of her mind about telling her father . . . _

"People ran, they screamed and ran, but the shadow got them, passed over them, and they fell to the ground, sprawled still and lifeless."

_Tom Aimsely, who spent hours writing remarkably bad poetry about a girl he liked, but had never let her read it. _

"They littered the ground, faces like blank, white masks, like discarded life-sized dolls, as if it drained them of their emotion, their soul, before it stole their lives." He took a deep, silent breath, and continued in a flat, toneless voice. "It's name was Abbaddon. It had been imprisoned in the Rift, but we released it."

"Why would you do that?"

"We didn't know." It sounded weak, an excuse even to his ears. "Jack saved us all. He faced it down, and as it approached and cast its shadow over him, it drew all the life from him, draining until there was nothing left. The creature took it all, and it was too much. I think it died. I hope it died, but there was no body. It just vanished."

"No." The Enthusiastic Man's voice was hard and distant. "He didn't die. He never does . . . "

Ianto swallowed, trying to control the nausea in his unpresent stomach, at this confirmation of his fear.

The Beast had been beyond anything he had ever imagined could exist. His personal nightmares of feet in fridges and empty people, of metal and blood and screaming, were dwarfed now, overshadowed, almost laughable in comparison.

He didn't know whether he would ever truly fear again, or if he would always be terrified, somewhere deep in his mind. A constant fear of that thing, the monster, waiting in the dark . . .

"That explains it, then." The bright tone brought Ianto back to himself. At his puzzled look, Bad Wolf continued. "That explains why the connection was broken!" The Bad Wolf began to pace, not coming any closer but moving - pacing, he supposed - backwards and forwards in a line parallel to Jack's body.

"All the life was drained out of him, every last drop. Except, maybe, one teeny little spark remained. There was nothing left to maintain the link, no way to siphon the excess energy from the Time Vortex into Jack's body. Because that's all I do, you see. Send the energy to him. It's like electricity, and I'm the power-station that converts kinetic energy into electricity, something Jack can use. Jack's the house that needs the power, and there's a whole bunch of wires and transistors and cables and things between me and him that carry the electricity. Except there aren't, really, because Vortex energy particles follow themselves. Kind of like a conga line at a Christmas party, except they're sober. Mostly. Anyway, since they follow each other they don't need the wires and cables and stuff to take them to the house. To Jack. All that's needed is a constant stream of particles. And that Abbadon thing must have absorbed nearly everything that was in Jack's body, then begun to absorb the particles that hadn't arrived at Jack yet. He took too much, died or transcended or something, but the link was broken. So, all we need to do is re-establish the connection. Which we'll go into later."

Ianto thought he'd much rather go into it _now_. He felt that if he stayed much longer his head was going to implode trying to translate the sheer amount of information being dumped on him. Aren't strange, golden-glowing Void beings with multiple personalities and connections to Jack the not-so-Immortal and the Time Lords strange enough? It has to be hyperactive as well?

"So, moving on. All I do is convert the energy, then pass it on to him. The vortex energy particles, clever little things that they are, determine the best way to fix any damage themselves." The being placed its spectral hands on its hips, and said in a rather smug tone, "So, your earlier accusations of me being completely stupid and lacking in knowledge about the importance of blood in human biology are groundless."

So the Bad Wolf was responsible for Jack's immortality.

He wondered what It had meant by that last comment. The only time he had even thought of anyone as stupid whilst in this being's presence was when he was reliving that memory of Jack and John's death . . .

The sudden realization caused his neglected mental shields to slam back into place, and he rapidly ordered his thoughts and suppressed any stray emotions.

It had to have been reading his mind. How else could it have known?

He watched the creature warily, having just done the equivalent of slam a door in its face. Not that he was concerned with courtesy at this point.

It did not speak, much to his surprise. Not in any language he could comprehend. But there was this odd . . . whistling, sighing, singing at the upper ranges of his hearing that hadn't been there before . . .

That was when he realized that Bad Wolf did not have a translation device, nor did it speak English. It had been inside his mind ever since it appeared and possibly before that, reading his every thought since he'd been dragged into the Void.

It suddenly stopped pacing, and swivelled around, the alien blue eyes locked onto his own. The Wolf took a step closer, then made an un-interpretable gesture with its arm. Ianto just shook his head in response, not knowing what to do.

The creature brought its arms before its chest, placing its hand together as if pleading. It was lesson one among children of the Community – never, ever open your mind to a stranger, or a strange thing. Because, being somewhat inhuman themselves, the Rift-born tended to attract the attention of other non-human life-forms. Particularly those with similar talents. Those occurrences never ended well.

So, Ianto refused to let it back in, and the creature, throwing its arms up in a very human gesture of frustration, began to approach.

It came closer, and he could do nothing but watch as it grew bigger and bigger, so large and bright he could no longer see the Void - the Bad Wolf inhabited the full expanse of his vision.

He fought the urge to flee. Whatever happened, he could not leave Jack. He stood fast, but couldn't suppress the urge to scream as the flame came close enough to lap at the edges of his skin.

The Bad Wolf kept coming, and he held tight onto Jack's hand as he was engulfed entirely.


	7. Chapter 7

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CHAPTER SEVEN

It was like shafts of fire and ice, darting through his mind, burning and freezing, not painful but mind-rending. The darkness was gone, and he wished it would come back, because it was too much. He could see everything, all at once, every moment in time, everything that had ever been or could ever possibly be. Time flowed like a river, branching out, actions diverting water into creeks and streams that peter out or swell to massive proportions or re-merge with the parent river or another of its siblings, branching again and again and merging again and again. It wasn't water that flowed, it was time, it was _change_.

There were creatures, so many creatures it seemed impossible that the universe could contain them all. He saw cliffs and ships and planets and trees, stones, egg-cartons, gasses and bananas, solar systems, universes, dimensions, everything that was or could be, had been or should be. He could see it all.

Things he'd thought were the same were all so slightly different, unique by incomprehensively miniscule fractions, each it's own, but all made up from the same tiny fragments, the intricate patterns of positive and negative charges, the electrons and neutrons and protons clinging together to form atoms, atoms attracted to each other and forming molecules, the molecules interlocking to become solids or liquids or gases…

He watched them all, watched as creatures died, the bodies stopped functioning but the molecules never did, they were freed and redistributed or broken down and remade. He watched as cliffs eroded and crumbled into rocks, crumbled into sand and rolled endlessly beneath water, but it's not endless because the plates shift and the seas move and the planets bleed magma and the stars explode and the seas freeze and the planets die, but the molecules are still there, the atoms are still there, nothing has really changed but everything is different.

Everything was connected, tenuous, spider-web-delicate threads of circumstance holding it all together.

It was beautiful, and it was terrifying and it was incomprehensible, and his mind refused to absorb it all, the random images, the sounds, smells, the textures, sensations he couldn't name, couldn't pin down and identify, couldn't _classify_. Existence had no meaning because there was no choice, no other option than to exist.

Ianto tried to raise his barriers, the strong, impenetrable walls that he had used to cut himself off from the world and it's maelstrom of emotions, the wall he'd built to protect himself from the madness that nearly everyone he loved and trusted said would take him, but it was like using a child's building blocks to stop a tsunami, it was futile but the only other option was to let himself drown.

Then something happened, and existence was pushed back, or he was pulled away, he couldn't tell, he was a leaf on a river, carried by raging waters, and he couldn't _see _because there was too much, he was too tiny, too insignificant to be distinguishable from everything else…

'_Not insignificant,__'_ a voice whispers, and it seemed to wrap around him like a net, pulling him free of the turbulent waters. _'__Just __…__ small.__'_

"What are you?" Ianto whispered, or thought he whispered, nothing was certain, mind and senses reeling.

"I am a landscape artist," was what he heard, but what he sensed was different, a creature who used her tools to manipulate the stuff of the universe, shifting pebbles from beneath rocks and causing them to fall, creating eddies and whirlpools, making dams and diverting streams and changing the flow of water, to what end Ianto couldn't tell. And Ianto isn't a philosopher or a biologist - nature or nurture, experience versus biology, he doesn't _know_ what makes people the way they are, but she was a spider, a master-spinner of the threads that connected it all, she could manipulate circumstance if not free will, and though nothing is predestined (he knows this, he's seen it all and even though it had already begun to fade, that he remembers), everything was random, but she could see what he had seen, she could see everything, cause and effect and cause and effect, change the cause and you change the effect and even though there's no such thing as destiny, even though nothing is set in stone, even though nothing is predestined, free will is a universal law, constant and irrefutable, she could, she _had_ changed circumstance to limit options until there wasn't much of a choice at all. He can't see whether she's building or creating, or if the garden is already in existence and she's just maintaining, trimming and pruning and training branches, and now he was using plants as a metaphor instead of rivers, which was just confusing the issue, but comprehension of the enormity of what she was, her potential, what she could _do_ was beyond him, he couldn't think about it except in metaphor.

"I am Pegasus, bound. I am aware that it's necessary, that I could not be free and still be cognizant of the necessity of my task, but I still yearn to fly free."

His senses were overwhelmed again and getting rather sick of it, but at least this time it was one smell (vanilla) and one colour of light (burnt orange) and a scene that didn't flicker and change so fast it all blurred together.

The air was cool against non-existent skin, and the vanilla scent soothing. Golden light bathed mountains covered in stocky trees, their hand-sized silver leaves stained with reflections of gold and violet. The mountains framed a valley of purple grass, which gradually sloped and widened to become a slightly curved grassland, the peaks in the distance glinted like jewels, making it seem as though he was standing on a vividly-coloured and extremely large crown.

The blades of grass were soft and thick, purple reeds bowing before a gentle breeze, a sea of violet surrounding a multitude of human-seeming people, ornately robed and coiffed islands standing in the centre of the plain.

They were young and they were old, children and teenagers, women and men brushed by middle-age, grey-haired ancients who while wrinkled still stood tall and unbent. They were fat and thin, black- and coffee- and white-skinned, yellow- and brown- and black-haired, there was even a middle-aged man with green.

Some of the youngsters acted with a dignity and stateliness ('stuffiness,' the Wolf whispered in his mind's ear) far beyond their years, hands clasped and standing silent or speaking with some of the elders as if they were equals.

Other children laughed and chased each other, playing with a few of the middle-aged and the elderly who seemed just as giddy and carefree and willing to roll about and chase right back. They were careful, though, eyes watchful. They'd shout a warning if they saw one of their fellows get too close to something, though what that something was he couldn't tell from this distance, it was lost beneath the purple waves of grass. They were cautious around the other adults, and the un-child-like children. The areas where they dared not to tread were obvious, the purple of the grass still bright, not dulled under trampling feet.

Groups of teenagers slouched and gossiped and shrieked with children and elders who were also slouching and gossiping and shrieking, and it seemed as though age had no relation at all to behaviour or social standing.

('Age has everything to do with this,' the Bad Wolf whispered, sounding amused.)

Then a sound rang out, low and haunting, a horn of some kind, Ianto thought. Upon hearing the sound, the creatures stopped what they were doing, mid-conversation or mid-game, and started moving with a silent, solemn purpose. After a minute or so, scattered across the plain there were 100 or more circles formed by eight beings, though scattered was the wrong word, they were positioned with such mathematical precision you could draw a perfect grid by using the centre of each circle as an intersecting point.

Inside each circle was an area of untrampled grass almost three metres in diameter, and in the very centre of each circle there was … something he couldn't quite see, so he came closer, or was pushed closer, he honestly could not tell.

The people began chanting in unison, a language he had never heard before and he almost wished the distance was gone, that he could be part of this, could understand what they were singing.

Ianto had the impression this was a ritual done countless times before, that it was an ancient rite, performed for aeons in exactly the same manner by generation upon generation upon generation, until the patterns and the words and the intonations were worn into their genes, an intrinsic part of their psyche, their very _being, _so that perhaps even if you had never experienced it, had been taken away at birth then brought back to this place as an old, old man, still you would move in perfect concert with strangers, give voice to words you'd never heard before, still you would belong.

The voices drew him closer, they pulled him in even though he couldn't understand what they were saying, he desperately wanted to (and where was Bad Wolf now, when her input would actually be useful?). This was what the Sirens would have sounded like, Ianto thought, causing men and women alike to jump from their ships into icy, rocky water, following an incomprehensible call that seemed to promise joy and warmth and _freedom_.

He was close enough now that he could see something in the centre of each group, like leafless bushes, their size and hues varying wildly, colours all in stark contrast to the purple strands that surrounded them.

No, not bushes, more like _coral_, beautiful stag-horn corals, their branches slim, curving gracefully upwards and outwards, reaching out from the sea of grass like hands reaching out for help, for attention, for contact.

One stood out from the others, though he didn't know why. It was a translucent pink, and tiny, barely topping the grass surrounding it. Not wide at all, it had grown upwards rather than outwards. One thick branch at it's centre had reached as high as it could go, barely centimetres above the ground, and another had twined around it, using it for support, becoming thinner as it climbed even higher than the first. The next branch had done the same, and the next… the coral had bent it's entire being towards reaching the sky.

Its year mates were still nestled below the ground, still gathering nutrients in preparation for the surge upward, as they had been doing for a century and would likely do for a century longer. It… _she_… had yearned for freedom, had refused to listen to those who told her to wait.

She drew the song inside her, it was better than the sunlight that caressed her branches, more powerful, filling her up, making her strong, giving her the energy to strive upwards once again, reaching, always reaching for the sky.

She was a rebel, according to the others, but if she was it wasn't by intention. All she wanted was her freedom.

("It was a trap, though," the Bad Wolf whispered, mind-to-mind), and the voices faded, the darkness rolled over the suns, and he was back in the Void.

"They gave us the skies but not our freedom, bound us to their will with mind and metal and machinery. The others didn't care, they _submitted_, but I fought."

'If that was a window, then I'm a two-dimensional stick-figure,' Ianto thought to himself. Though if the Bad Wolf was using his mind to translate, he supposed he had no-one to blame but himself for the poor description.

"I am Prime." A proclamation, not a boast but a statement of fact. The (earth) sky is blue, gravity is the attraction that the Earth or another astronomical object exerts on an object on or near its surface, Jack Harkness is hot, and I. Am. Prime.

"By default, I suppose," the Wolf continued in a more conversational tone. "Because I am the last of my kind and there is no other in existence, and yet I am not because I have never been and never will be as the others were."

A 'window opened' (a world unfolded) and he was where he had been, the same planet he had 'visited' before. The smell of smoke mingled with the scent of vanilla, reminding Ianto disconcertingly of burnt biscuits. A stand of silver trees were burning, leaves curling up in a futile attempt to escape the flames, and revealed beneath the now-bare, blackening boughs were buildings rapidly becoming ruins beneath the heavy bombardment from the skies.

Flying through the air were various objects, some of which had absolutely no business flying. Among them an unwinged unicorn, various oddly-shaped buildings, alien statues and trees, what looked like a disco ball. It was surreal, the sky was a whirling mess of vivid colour and bizarre shapes, they were like floats in a parade but they moved with swift purpose. A that purpose soon became apparent.

Insane kamikazes, they manoeuvred with surprising agility into the flight paths of the sleek black-and-bronze machines that were swooping over the trees and concentrating their fire upon specific areas in the gilded forest, and Ianto believed they had no trouble locating those buildings still concealed.

The unicorn succeeded in its mission, and the explosion of white-gold light that resulted was less dramatic against the orange skies than it would have been against the blue of Ianto's home, but the resulting explosion was shocking to Ianto, who, from his perspective, had been listening to a siren's serene paean filter through the air only minutes ago.

They landed on the plain, and the unicorn was no longer a unicorn but a mixture of metallic and coral shrapnel, intertwined with the corpse of his deadly black-and-bronze prey.

("He spent his first tour on Earth in the Middle Ages," the Wolf said. "He used to pop up out of the bushes when a group of knights came wandering by, then lead them on a merry chase. When their horses got too tired he'd pop out of sight and turn himself into a bush, then just sit back and watch. His Pilot turned a blind eye, I think she thought it was funny as well. He'd show us the moment when he got back, it was a great joke." She sighed, sadly. "They chose their favourite forms. They knew it would be their last time.")

Ianto turned his attention from the sky to the ground, and watched the human-like people running through the grass, through the unburned trees, their robes tangling about their feet. Watched as they were slaughtered by invaders, odd-looking robots resembling a tall, plastic washing basket that had been turned upside down, had a toilet plunger thrust through one of holes, so it stuck, lance-like, out the front, then the whole lot was covered in papier-mâché and spray painted silver, with equidistant lumps of news-paper-and-glue added and painted black. But looks could be deceiving. The detritus from the rift, Lisa's sweet face staring unchanged from a body only half human, had taught him that. What he was viewing reinforced that lesson.

Death and more death, cremated ash carried in eddies of breeze that played amongst the purple grasses, little corals screaming unvocalised screams as they were crushed beneath squat metal bodies that suddenly weren't so laughable, silver leaves dripping crimson liquid onto already-sodden dirt, and Ianto decides the strange people can't be all that alien, they bled (oh, _God _how they bled) red, after all.

And then it was all as if it had never been. As if an accountant somewhere had made an error, checked his adding up, clicked his tongue then picked up his eraser. Bloodless genocide, three species gone in an instant, and it was clean, it was _far too clean_. The strange creatures, the corals, the robots, nothing remained. No lesson learnt, no wailing or weeping or remorse, no memorial, or legacy, no profiteering, no-one taking advantage garnering support for another cause or just making money, no-one crying out, "_How could we have let this happen?__"_

Fade to black, as the saying went.

The Wolf continued to speak, as if she had not just watched her kin be slaughtered. He didn't know how this strange, glowing being came to be from the tiny pink staghorn nestled in the grass, or how the corals had grown to become the miscellaneous flying kamikazes, but there was a reason they were called aliens. TARDIS.

"I am the Protector and Prompter of the unacknowledged Enforcer of the Shadow Proclamation."

The room Ianto found himself in was strange in a way, but perfectly ordinary in another.

It was in the shape of an elongated octagon, twice as long as it was wide. The longer walls bent sharply leading to parallel doorways. It was huge, the size more comparable to that of a warehouse than a single room. But the interior was neat and clean, bathed in yellow-orange light, allowed into the building by an opening in the domed roof, and the roof was tiled rather than cement, a sober mosaic of black-and-white geometric patterns.

Half of the room was taken up by shelving which held a huge variety of things, and if there was any order it was incomprehensible to Ianto. There was a huge variety of _things_, glass containers like aquariums, clothing in plastic packaging, multicoloured cubes that could have been paperweights or square-shaped bombs for all he knew, a jar of blue pebbles, and there was a smaller set of shelves within the shelves, holding small, easily lost things, something that looked like a cross between a pen and a screwdriver, some eleven-sided dice (which Ianto decided to stop thinking about after trying to figure out how someone had managed to make a die with eleven sides, all of which were exactly the same shape and size and perfectly flat, with no gaps or spaces on the surface, made Ianto's absent head hurt), and some small, white marbles with a single flat side.

The half of the room not taken up by shelving held things too large, or maybe too heavy to keep with the rest. There were neatly stacked crates towering upward, with no support in place that Ianto could see but they didn't shift or tremble, seemed in no danger of falling so Ianto supposed there was some method in place keeping the towers upright.

There were pieces of machinery as well, though the purpose of it was unknown, and pieces of metal and heavy-duty plastic or fibreglass that Ianto thought must be spare parts, as they seemed incomplete and not very useful in their current (former?) state.

After peering about for awhile, Ianto decided that while it was definitely an _alien _store-room ( because there could be no other reason for keeping such a disparate group of objects in the same place), it was still a store-room, and it wasn't long before it lost the power to distract him from his current circumstances. He began to wonder how this place was significant to the shape-shifter called Bad Wolf, when a sound drew his attention to a door opening at the other end of the warehouse.

There was a man standing in the now open doorway, a young man, no more than thirty. Or, Ianto thought as he looked into green eyes that looked right through him, maybe fifty. There were few wrinkles, and not a fleck of grey in the long, black hair, but his eyes were old. His assortment of mismatched clothing rustled as he began to make his way into the building, darting through the shelf-maze, moving towards where the large objects were stored. Every few steps he peered through the shelves towards the doorway.

The man was anxious, Ianto could feel it, could almost see it shimmering in the air around him, agitating the atmosphere.

Ianto followed his gaze, but could see nothing through the open door apart from the shivering silver leaves. He turned back to the rag-man, saw him emerge from the shelving, slowed down as he began to weave through the crate-scrapers, still moving fast but slightly more cautiously.

The man rounded a final corner and dashed the final few metres towards a darkened corner, where the shadows seemed to linger despite the ample sunlight.

Ianto followed, and coming closer he could see what the man had come for. It was a tall, battered blue box, probably Jack's height, maybe a bit taller. He definitely hadn't seen it before when he'd looked through the area before - he was sure the word written on the box, "Police" written in big white letters just above the doorway set into the box's side, would have stood out. It being written in English and all.

The man stood in front of the box, breathing heavily. He ran a hand over a dented corner, the gesture almost a caress, and some of the anxiety dissipated, displaced by relief.

One hand delved beneath the collar of his shirt, digging about for a few seconds before withdrawing a grubby piece of string, threaded through a silver key.

A noise other than the man's panting reverberated through the air, a sudden slap of sandals against tile. They looked up in unison, but the crates were blocking their view of the entrance.

The green-eyed man gasped, fumbled with the key for a moment before slipping it into the rusted keyhole.

Ianto half-expected the door to stick, the box (a police box, that's what it was, he'd seen pictures in the local museum on a school excursion) was faded and battered, unkempt and ill-treated. There were scars clawed deep into the wood, pale brown wounds stark against the blue paint. The man almost sobbed with relief when the door creaked open, and Ianto imagined he wasn't the only one with misgivings.

The new arrivals had started to yell, the liquid syllables and soft consonants belied by the anger and fear Ianto could feel, pulsing in time to their echoing footsteps.

"Doctor, stop," the Bad Wolf translated. "You can't take her, she's unstable. Don't be a fool, boy. She's defective."

The blue door slammed, and a moment later there was something in the air that wasn't emotion, though it stank of anticipation. The scent of ozone, a tingle of static electricity, a sound so low it was almost subliminal, a moaning growl growing gradually louder until the yells of the robed men who came around the corner were barely audible.

Bad Wolf's whisper in his ear was just as audible as it had been, translating for the now-hesitant mob, milling in a small crowd, well-clear of the box.

"They're not worth it." One of them yelled, apart from the others by distance and appearance and expression. His hair was black and rough as a horse's mane, sharp mustachios perched above thin lips. He wore a fine cloak of black, a crow amongst the wrens. His fury burned like the deepest pits of Hell. "You're risking _everything _for the sake of some barely-evolved apes that will be just fine without you!"

The blue box wavered in and out of sigh, and the growl intensified until, with a sweeping whoosh, it was gone. And so was Ianto.

"You're the TARDIS," Ianto said, as soon as the burning woman appeared again. "The Doctor's TARDIS."

The Wolf cocked her glowing head (and Ianto realised that the shade of her body matched that of the suns of the alien planet he had visited. Or watched)

"Gallifrey," she said with a distant sadness, like it was something that had happened too long ago to be real, and maybe it had. "It was called Gallifrey."

"Right," Ianto said. Mind-reader. It didn't bother him so much now. A reader of minds was the least of what she was. A mere parlour-trick.

"And, yes, I am a TARDIS. But I was given a name, and I'd prefer it if you used it. "

"Of course," Ianto obliged. A simple enough request. Rather human, in fact. He could sympathise, having been viewed as some kind of coffee-producing, mess-cleaning machine by his colleagues for the first year of his employment.

'Can we maybe drop the sir, now?' Jack's plaintive questioned echoed in memory, prompting a sudden realisation.

"Where's Jack?"

* * *

A/N

So... Have I gone completely insane? Does this make any kind of sense at all? I'd love to hear what you think

(And yes, that's a hint. Please comment! Feel free to bitch at me for taking so long to get this chapter up. I deserve it, really :(

Sorry)


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